GIFT  OF 
A.    P.    Morrison 


*• 


' 


^f 


LATEST   LITERARY  ESSAYS 
AND  ADDRESSES 


OF 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL 


BOSTON   AND   NEW  YORK 

HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND   COMPANY 

Cfte  BitoersiDe  J3rcss,  Cambribgc 

1892 


XS 


BY  MABEL  LOWELL  BURNETT. 

Alt  rights  reserved. 


The  Riverside  Press,  Cambridge,  Mass.,  O.  S.  A. 
Electrotyped  and  Printed  by  H.  O.  Houghton  &  Co. 


NOTE. 

THE  publication  in  a  volume  of  the  following 
Essays  and  Addresses  is  in  accordance  with  the  in 
tention  of  their  author.  Most  of  them  had  been 
revised  by  him  with  this  end  in  view.  The  only 
one  of  them  concerning  which  there  is  a  doubt, 
whether  he  would  have  published  it  in  its  present 
form,  is  the  paper  on  "  Richard  III."  With  this 
he  was  not  satisfied,  and  he  hesitated  in  regard  to 
printing  it.  It  has  seemed  to  me  of  interest 
enough  to  warrant  its  publication. 

The  essay  on  Gray  was  in  large  part  written 
more  than  ten  years  before  it  was  printed  in  the 
"New  Princeton  Review,"  in  1880.  The  essay 
on  the  "  Areopagitica  "  was  written  at  the  request 
of  the  Grolier  Club,  of  New  York,  for  an  intro 
duction  to  an  edition  of  the  work  specially  printed 
for  the  Club.  I  am  indebted  to  the  Club  for  per 
mission  to  include  it  in  this  volume. 

CHARLES  ELIOT  NORTON. 

CAMBRIDGE,  MASSACHUSETTS, 
16  November,  1891. 


M107796 


CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

GRAY 1 

SOME  LETTERS  OF  WALTER  SAVAGE  LANDOR  ...  43 

WALTON 57 

MILTON'S  "  AREOPAGITICA  "         ...<,..  94 

SHAKESPEARE'S  "  RICHARD  III ."     .        .        .        .        .  Ill 

THE  STUDY  OF  MODERN  LANGUAGES          ....  131 

THE  PROGRESS  OF  THE  WORLD      .        .        .  160 


LATEST  LITERARY  ESSAYS  AND 
ADDRESSES. 


GRAY. 

1886. 

THE  eighteenth  century,  judged  by  the  literature 
it  produced  everywhere  in  Europe  outside  of  Ger 
many  and  France,  is  generally  counted  inferior  to 
that  which  preceded  and  to  that  which  followed  it. 
A  judgment  of  especial  severity  has  been  passed 
upon  its  poetry  by  critics  who  lost  somewhat  of 
their  judicial  equipoise  in  that  enthusiasm  of  the 
romantic  reaction  which  replaced  the  goddess  of 
good  taste  by  her  of  liberty,  and  crowned  the  judi 
cial  wig  with  the  Phrygian  cap.  The  poetry  of  the 
period  fell  under  a  general  condemnation  as  alto 
gether  wanting  in  the  imaginative  quality,  and  as 
being  rather  the  conclusions  of  the  understanding 
put  into  verse  than  an  attempt  to  express,  however 
inadequately,  the  eternal  longings  and  intuitions 
and  experiences  of  human  nature.  These  find  their 
vent,  it  was  thought,  in  those  vivid  flashes  of  phrase, 
the  instantaneous  bolts  of  passionate  conception, 
whose  furrow  of  splendor  across  the  eyeballs  of  the 
mind  leaves  them  momentarily  dark  to  the  outward 
universe,  only  to  quicken  their  vision  of  inward  and 


GRAY 

)le^  things.  There  was  some  truth  in 
criticism,,  as  there  commonly  is  in  the  harsh 
"judgnjeiitsi:  of  ^  iinperfect  sympathy,  but  it  was  far 
from  being  the  whole  truth. 

If  poesy  be,  as  the  highest  authority  has  defined 
it,  a  divine  madness,  no  English  poet  and  no 
French  one  between  1700  and  1800  need  have 
feared  a  writ  de  lunatico  inquirendo.  They  talk, 
to  be  sure,  of  "  sacred  rages,"  but  in  so  decorous  a 
tone  that  we  do  not  even  glance  towards  the  tongs. 
They  invoke  fire  from  heaven  in  such  frozen  verse 
as  would  have  set  it  at  defiance  had  their  prayer 
been  answered.  Cowper  was  really  mad  at  inter 
vals,  but  his  poetry,  admirable  as  it  is  in  its  own 
middle-aged  way,  is  in  need  of  anything  rather 
than  of  a  strait-waistcoat.  A  certain  blight  of 
propriety  seems  to  have  fallen  on  all  the  verse  of 
that  age.  The  thoughts,  wived  with  words  above 
their  own  level,  are  always  on  their  good  behavior, 
and  we  feel  that  they  would  have  been  happier  in 
the  homelier  unconstraint  of  prose.  Diction  was 
expected  to  do  for  imagination  what  only  imagi 
nation  could  do  for  it,  and  the  magic  which  was 
personal  to  the  magician  was  supposed  to  reside  in 
the  formula. 

Dry  den  died  with  his  century ;  and  nothing 
can  be  more  striking  than  the  contrast  between 
him,  the  last  of  the  ancient  line,  and  the  new  race 
which  succeeded  him.  In  him,  too,  there  is  an 
element  of  prose,  an  alloy  of  that  good  sense  so 
admirable  in  itself,  so  incapable  of  those  indiscre 
tions  which  make  the  charm  of  poetry.  His  power 


GRAY  3 

of  continuous  thinking  shows  his  mind  of  a  differ 
ent  quality  from  those  whose  thought  comes  as 
lightning,  intermittently  it  may  be,  but  lightning, 
mysterious,  incalculable,  the  more  unexpected  that 
we  watch  for  it,  and  generated  by  forces  we  do 
not  comprehend.  Yet  Dry  den  at  his  best  is  won 
derfully  impressive.  He  reminds  one  of  a  boiling 
spring.  There  is  tumult,  concussion,  and  no  little 
vapor  ;  but  there  is  force,  there  is  abundance,  there 
is  reverberation,  and  we  feel  that  elemental  fire  is 
at  work,  though  it  be  of  the  earth  earthy.  But 
what  strikes  us  most  in  him,  considered  intellectu 
ally,  is  his  modernness.  Only  twenty-three  years 
younger  than  Milton,  he  belongs  to  another  world. 
Milton  is  in  many  respects  an  ancient.  Words 
worth  says  of  him  that 

"  His  soul  was  a  star  and  dwelt  apart." 

But  I  should  rather  be  inclined  to  say  that  it  was 
his  mind  that  was  alienated  from  the  present.  In 
tensely  and  even  vehemently  engaged  in  the  ques 
tion  of  the  day,  his  politics  were  abstract  and 
theoretic,  and  a  quotation  from  Sophocles  has  as 
much  weight  with  him  as  a  constitutional  precedent. 
His  intellectual  sympathies  were  Greek.  His  lan 
guage  even  has  caught  the  accent  of  the  ancient 
world.  When  he  makes  our  English  search  her 
coffers  round,  it  is  not  for  any  home-made  orna 
ments,  and  his  commentators  are  fain  to  unravel 
some  of  his  syntax  by  the  help  of  the  Greek  or 
Latin  grammar. 

Dryden   knew  Latin   literature    very  well,   but 


4  GRAY 

that  innate  scepticism  of  his  mind,  which  made 
him  an  admirable  critic,  would  not  allow  him  to  be 
subjugated  by  antiquity.  His  sesthetical  training 
was  essentially  French  ;  and  if  this  sometimes  had 
an  ill  effect  on  his  poetry,  it  was  greatly  to  the 
advantage  of  his  prose,  wherein  ease  and  dignity 
are  combined  in  that  happy  congruity  of  propor 
tion  which  we  call  style,  and  the  scholar's  fulness 
of  mind  is  mercifully  tempered  by  the  man  of  the 
world's  dread  of  being  too  fiercely  in  earnest.  It 
is  a  gentlemanlike  style,  thoroughbred  in  every 
fibre.  As  it  was  without  example,  so,  I  think,  it 
has  remained  without  a  parallel  in  English.  Swift 
has  the  ease,  but  lacks  the  lift ;  and  Burke,  who 
plainly  formed  himself  on  Dryden,  has  matched 
him  in  splendor,  but  has  not  caught  his  artistic  skill 
in  gradation,  nor  that  perfection  of  tone  which  can 
be  eloquent  without  being  declamatory. 

When  I  try  to  penetrate  the  secret  of  Dry  den's 
manner,  I  seem  to  discover  that  the  new  quality  in 
it  is  a  certain  air  of  good  society,  an  urbanity,  in 
the  original  meaning  of  the  word.  By  this  I  mean 
that  his  turn  of  thought  (I  am  speaking  of  his 
maturer  works)  is  that  of  the  capital,  of  the  great 
world,  as  it  is  somewhat  presumptuously  called,  and 
that  his  diction  is,  in  consequence,  more  conversa 
tional  than  that  which  had  been  traditional  with 
any  of  the  more  considerable  poets  who  had  pre 
ceded  him.  It  is  hard  to  justify  a  general  impres 
sion  by  conclusive  examples.  Two  instances  will 
serve  to  point  my  meaning,  if  not  wholly  to  jus 
tify  my  generalization.  His  ode  on  the  death  of 
Mrs.  Killigrew  begins  thus :  — 


GRAY  5 

"  Thou  youngest  virgin-daughter  of  the  skies, 
Made  in  the  last  promotion  of  the  blest." 

And  in  his  translation  of  the  third  book  of  the 
"2Eneid,"  he  describes  Achaeinenides,  the  Greek  res 
cued  by  the  Trojans  from  the  island  of  the  Cyclops, 
as  "  bolting  "  from  the  woods. 

Dry  den,  in  making  verse  the  vehicle  of  good 
sense  and  argument  rather  than  of  passion  and  in 
tuition,  affords  but  an  indication  of  the  tendency 
of  the  time  in  which  he  lived,  —  a  tendency  quick 
ened  by  the  influence  which  could  not  fail  to  be 
exerted  by  his  really  splendid  powers  as  a  poet,  es 
pecially  by  the  copious  felicity  of  his  language  and 
his  fine  instinct  for  the  energies  and  harmonies  of 
rhythm.  But  the  fact  that  a  great  deal  of  his  work 
was  job-work,  that  most  of  it  was  done  in  a  hurry, 
led  him  often  to  fill  up  a  gap  with  the  first  sono 
rous  epithet  that  came  to  hand,  and  his  indolence 
was  thus  partly  to  blame  for  that  poetic  diction 
which  brought  poetry  to  a  deadlock  in  the  next 
century.  Dryden  knew  very  well  that  sound  makes 
part  of  the  sense  and  a  large  part  of  the  sentiment 
of  a  verse,  and,  where  he  is  in  the  vein,  few  poets 
have  known  better  than  he  how  to  conjure  with 
vowels,  or  to  beguile  the  mind  into  acquiescence 
through  the  ear.  Addison  said  truly,  though  in 
verses  whose  see-saw  cadence  and  lack  of  musical 
instinct  would  have  vexed  the  master's  ear :  — 

"  Great  Dryden  next,  whose  tuneful  Muse  affords 
The  sweetest  numbers  and  the  fittest  words." 

But  Dryden  never  made  the  discovery  that  ten  syl 
lables  arranged  in  a  proper  accentual  order  were 


6  GRAY 

all  that  was  needful  to  make  a  ten-syllable  verse. 
He  is  great  Dryden,  after  all,  and  between  him  and 
Wordsworth  there  was  no  poet  with  enough  energy 
of  imagination  to  deserve  that  epithet.  But  he  had 
taught  the  trick  of  cadences  that  made  the  manu 
facture  of  verses  more  easy,  and  he  had  brought 
the  language  of  poetry  nearer,  not  to  the  language 
of  real  life  as  Wordsworth  understood  it,  that  is, 
to  the  speech  of  the  people,  but  to  the  language  of 
the  educated  and  polite.  He  himself  tells  us  at  the 
end  of  the  "  Keligio  Laici :  "  — 

"  And  this  unpolished,  rugged  verse  I  chose 
As  fittest  for  discourse,  and  nearest  prose." 

Unpolished  and  rugged  the  verse  certainly  was  not, 
nor  in  his  hands  could  ever  be.  It  is  the  thought 
that  has  an  irresistible  attraction  for  prosaic  phrase, 
and  coalesces  with  it  in  a  stubborn  precipitate  which 
will  not  become  ductile  to  the  poetic  form. 

Dryden  perfected  the  English  rhymed  heroic 
verse  by  giving  it  a  variety  of  cadence  and  pomp 
of  movement  which  it  had  never  had  before. 
Pope's  epigrammatic  cast  of  thought  led  him  to 
spend  his  skill  on  bringing  to  a  nicer  adjustment 
the  balance  of  the  couplet,  in  which  he  succeeded 
only  too  wearisomely  well.  Between  them  they  re 
duced  versification  in  their  favorite  measure  to  the 
precision  of  a  mechanical  art,  and  then  came  the 
mob  of  gentlemen  who  wrote  with  ease.  Through 
the  whole  eighteenth  century  the  artificial  school  of 
poetry  reigned  by  a  kind  of  undivine  right  over  a 
public  wilich  admired  —  and  yawned.  This  public 
seems  to  have  listened  to  its  poets  as  it  did  to  its 


GRAY  7 

preachers,  satisfied  that  all  was  orthodox  if  only 
they  heard  the  same  thing  over  again  every  time, 
and  believing  the  pentameter  couplet  a  part  of  the 
British  Constitution.  And  yet  it  is  to  the  credit  of 
that  age  to  have  kept  alive  the  wholesome  tradition 
that  Writing,  whether  in  prose  or  verse,  was  an 
Art  that  required  training,  at  least,  if  nothing  more, 
in  those  who  assumed  to  practise  it. 

Burke  thought  it  impossible  to  draw  an  indict 
ment  against  a  whole  people,  and  the  remark  is 
equally  just  if  we  apply  it  to  a  century.  It  is  true 
that  with  the  eighteenth  a  season  of  common  sense 
set  in  with  uncommon  severity,  and  such  a  season 
acts  like  a  drought  upon  the  springs  of  poesy.  To 
be  sure,  an  unsentimental  person  might  say  that 
the  world  can  get  on  much  better  without  the  finest 
verses  that  ever  were  written  than  without  common 
sense,  and  I  am  willing  to  admit  that  the  question 
is  a  debatable  one,  and  to  compromise  upon  uncom 
mon  sense  whenever  it  is  to  be  had.  Let  us  admit 
that  the  eighteenth  century  was,  on  the  whole,  pro 
saic,  yet  it  may  have  been  a  pretty  fair  one  as  cen 
turies  go.  u  'T  is  hard  to  find  a  whole  age  to  imi 
tate,  or  what  century  to  propose  for  example,"  says 
wise  Sir  Thomas  Browne.  Every  age  is  as  good  as 
the  people  who  live  in  it  choose  or  can  contrive  to 
make  it,  and,  if  good  enough  for  them,  perhaps 
we,  who  had  no  hand  in  the  making  of  it,  can 
complain  of  it  only  so  far  as  it  had  a  hand  in 
the  making  of  us.  Perhaps  even  our  own  age, 
with  its  marvels  of  applied  science  that  have  made 
the  world  more  prosily  comfortable,  will  loom  less 


8  GRAY 

gigantic  than  now  through  the  prospective  of  the 
future.  Perhaps  it  will  even  be  found  that  the 
telephone,  of  which  we  are  so  proud,  cannot  carry 
human  speech  so  far  as  Homer  and  Plato  have 
contrived  to  carry  it  with  their  simpler  appliances. 
As  one  grows  older,  one  finds  more  points  of  half- 
reluctant  sympathy  with  that  undyspeptic  and 
rather  worldly  period,  much  in  the  same  way  as  one 
grows  to  find  a  keener  savor  in  Horace  and  Mon 
taigne.  In  the  first  three  quarters  of  it,  at  least, 
there  was  a  cheerfulness  and  contentment  with 
things  as  they  were,  which  is  no  unsound  philosophy 
for  the  mass  of  mankind,  and  which  has  been  im 
possible  since  the  first  French  Revolution.  For  our 
own  War  of  Independence,  though  it  gave  the  first 
impulse  to  that  awful  riot  of  human  nature  turned 
loose  among  first  principles,  was  but  the  reassertion 
of  established  precedents  and  traditions,  and  essen 
tially  conservative  in  its  aim,  however  deflected  in 
its  course.  It  is  true  that,  to  a  certain  extent,  the 
theories  of  the  French  doctrinaires  gave  a  tinge  to 
the  rhetoric  of  our  patriots,  but  it  is  equally  true 
that  they  did  not  perceptibly  affect  the  conclusions 
of  our  Constitution-makers.  Nor  had  those  doctri 
naires  themselves  any  suspicion  of  the  explosive 
mixture  that  can  be  made  by  the  conjunction  of  ab 
stract  theory  with  brutal  human  instinct.  Before 
1789  there  was  a  delightful  period  of  universal 
confidence,  during  which  a  belief  in  the  perfecti 
bility  of  man  was  insensibly  merging  into  a  convic 
tion  that  he  could  be  perfected  by  some  formula  of 
words,  just  as  a  man  is  knighted.  He  kneels  down 


GRAY  9 

a  simple  man  like  ourselves,  is  told  to  rise  up  a 
Perfect  Being,  and  rises  accordingly.  It  certainly 
was  a  comfortable  time.  If  there  was  discontent, 
it  was  in  the  individual,  and  not  in  the  air  ;  spo 
radic,  not  epidemic.  The  discomfort  of  Cowper 
was  not  concerning  this  world  but  the  world  to  come. 
Men  sate  as  roomily  in  their  consciences  as  in  the 
broad-bottomed  chairs  which  suggest  such  solidity 
of  repose.  Kesponsibility  for  the  Universe  had 
not  yet  been  invented.  A  few  solitary  persons  saw 
a  swarm  of  ominous  question-marks  wherever  they 
turned  their  eyes  ;  but  sensible  people  pronounced 
them  the  mere  muscce  volitantes  of  indigestion 
which  an  honest  dose  of  rhubarb  woidd  disperse. 
Men  read  Rousseau  for  amusement,  and  never 
dreamed  that  those  flowers  of  rhetoric  were  ripen 
ing  the  seed  of  the  guillotine.  Post  and  telegraph 
were  not  so  importunate  as  now.  People  were 
not  compelled  to  know  what  all  the  fools  in  the 
world  were  saying  or  doing  yesterday.  It  is  im 
possible  to  conceive  of  a  man's  enjoying  now  the 
unconcerned  seclusion  of  White  at  Selborne,  who,  a 
century  ago,  recorded  the  important  fact  that "  the 
old  tortoise  at  Lewes  in  Sussex  awakened  and  came 
forth  out  of  his  dormitory,"  but  does  not  seem  to 
have  heard  of  Burgoyne?s  surrender,  the  news  of 
which  ought  to  have  reached  him  about  the  time  he 
was  writing.  It  may  argue  pusillanimity,  but  I  can 
hardly  help  envying  the  remorseless  indifference  of 
such  men  to  the  burning  questions  of  the  hour,  at 
the  first  alarm  of  which  we  are  all  expected  to 
run  with  our  buckets,  or  it  may  be  with  our  can  of 


10  GRAY 

kerosene,  snatched  by  mistake  in  the  hurry  and 
confusion.  They  devoted  themselves  to  leisure  with 
as  much  assiduity  as  we  employ  to  render  it  impos 
sible.  The  art  of  being  elegantly  and  strenuously 
idle  is  lost.  There  was  no  hurry  then,  and  armies 
still  went  into  winter  quarters  punctually  as  mus 
quashes.  Certainly  manners  occupied  more  tune 
and  were  allowed  more  space.  Whenever  one  sees 
a  picture  of  that  age,  with  its  broad  skirts,  its 
rapiers  standing  out  almost  at  a  right  angle,  and 
demanding  a  wide  periphery  to  turn  about,  one  has 
a  feeling  of  spaciousness  that  suggests  mental  as 
well  as  bodily  elbow-room.  Now  all  the  ologies 
follow  us  to  our  burrows  in  our  newspaper,  and 
crowd  upon  us  with  the  pertinacious  benevolence  of 
subscription-books.  Even  the  right  of  sanctuary 
is  denied.  The  horns  of  the  altar,  which  we  fain 
would  grasp,  have  become  those  of  a  dilemma  in  the 
attempt  to  combine  science  with  theology. 

This,  no  doubt,  is  the  view  of  a  special  mood, 
but  it  is  a  mood  that  grows  upon  us  the  longer  we 
have  stood  upon  our  lees.  Enough  if  we  feel  a 
faint  thrill  or  reminiscence  of  ferment  in  the  spring, 
as  old  wine  is  said  to  do  when  the  grapes  are  in 
blossom.  Then  we  are  sure  that  we  are  neither 
dead  nor  turned  to  vinegar,  and  repeat  softly  to 
ourselves,  in  Dryden's  delightful  paraphrase  of 
Horace :  — 

"Happy  the  man,  and  happy  he  alone, 
He  who  can  call  to-day  his  own  ; 
He  who,  secure  within,  can  say, 
*  To-morrow,  do  thy  worst,  for  I  have  lived  to-day ; 
Be  fair  or  foul,  or  rain  or  shine, 


GRA Y  11 

The  joys  I  have  possessed  in  spite  of  Fate  are  mine  ; 

Not  heaven  itself  upon  the  past  has  power, 

But  what  has  been,  has  been,  and  I  have  had  my  hour.'  " 

One  has  a  notion  that  in  those  old  times  the  days 
were  longer  than  now  ;  that  a  man  called  to-day  his 
own  by  a  securer  title,  and  held  his  hours  with  a 
sense  of  divine  right  now  obsolete.  It  is  an  absurd 
fancy,  I  know,  and  would  be  sent  to  the  right-about 
by  the  first  physicist  or  historian  you  happened  to 
meet.  But  one  thing  I  am  sure  of,  that  the  private 
person  was  of  more  importance  both  to  himself  and 
others  then  than  now,  and  that  self-consciousness 
was,  accordingly,  a  vast  deal  more  comfortable  be 
cause  it  had  less  need  of  conscious  self-assertion. 

But  the  Past  always  has  the  advantage  of  us  in 
the  secret  it  has  learned  of  holding  its  tongue,  which 
may  perhaps  account  in  part  for  its  reputed  wisdom. 
Whatever  the  eighteenth  century  was,  there  was  a 
great  deal  of  stout  fighting  and  work  done  in  it, 
both  physical  and  intellectual,  and  we  owe  it  a  great 
debt.  Its  very  inefficacy  for  the  higher  reaches  of 
poetiy,  its  very  good-breeding  that  made  it  shy  of 
the  raised  voice  and  flushed  f  eatures  of  enthusiasm, 
enabled  it  to  give  us  the  model  of  a  domestic  and 
drawing-room  prose  as  distinguished  from  that  of 
the  pulpit,  the  forum,  or  the  closet.  In  Germany 
it  gave  us  Lessing  and  that  half  century  of  Goethe 
which  made  him  what  he  was.  In  France  it  o-ave 

O 

us  Voltaire,  who,  if  he  used  ridicule  too  often  for 
the  satisfaction  of  personal  spite,  employed  it  also 
for  sixty  years  in  the  service  of  truth  and  jus 
tice,  and  to  him  more  than  to  any  other  one  man 


12  GRAY 

we  owe  it  that  we  can  now  think  and  speak  as  we 
choose.  Contemptible  he  may  have  been  in  more 
ways  than  one,  but  at  any  rate  we  owe  him  that, 
and  it  is  surely  something.  In  what  is  called  the 
elegant  literature  of  our  own  tongue  (to  speak  only 
of  the  most  eminent),  it  gave  us  Addison  and  Steele, 
who  together  made  a  man  of  genius ;  Pope,  whose 
vivid  genius  almost  persuaded  wit  to  renounce  its 
proper  nature  and  become  poetry ;  Thomson,  who 
sought  inspiration  in  nature,  though  in  her  least 
imaginative  side  ; l  Fielding,  still  in  some  respects 
our  greatest  novelist ;  Richardson,  the  only  author 
who  ever  made  long-windedness  seem  a  benefaction ; 
Sterne,  the  most  subtle  humorist  since  Shakespeare ; 
Goldsmith,  in  whom  the  sweet  humanity  of  Chau 
cer  finds  its  nearest  parallel ;  Cowper,  the  poet  of 
Nature  in  her  more  domestic  and  familiar  moods ; 
Johnson,  whose  brawny  rectitude  of  mind  more 
than  atones  for  coarseness  of  fibre.  Toward  the 
middle  of  the  century,  also,  two  books  were  pub 
lished  which  made  an  epoch  in  aesthetics,  Dodsley's 
"  Old  Plays  "  (1744)  and  Percy's  "  Ballads  "  (1765). 
These  gave  the  first  impulse  to  the  romantic  reac 
tion  against  a  miscalled  classicism,  and  were  the 
seed  of  the  literary  renaissance. 

The  temper  of   the  times  and   the  comfortable 
conditions  on  which  life  was  held  by  the  educated 


1  That  Thomson  was  a  man  of  true  poetic  sensibility  is  shown,  I 
think,  more  agreeably  in  The  Castle  of  Indolence  than  in  The  Sea 
sons.  In  these,  when  he  buckles  the  buskins  of  Milton  on  the  feet 
of  his  natural  sermo  pedestris,  the  effect  too  often  suggests  the  un 
wieldy  gait  of  a  dismounted  trooper  in  his  jack-boots. 


GRAY  13 

class  were  sure  to  produce  a  large  crop  of  dilettante- 
ism,  of  delight  in  art  and  the  things  belonging  to  it 
as  an  elegant  occupation  of  the  mind  without  taxing 
its  faculties  too  severely.  If  the  dilettante  in  his 
eagerness  to  escape  ennui  sometimes  become  a  bore 
himself,  especially  to  the  professional  artist,  he  is 
not  without  his  use  in  keeping  alive  the  traditions 
of  good  taste  and  transmitting  the  counsels  of  ex 
perience.  In  proportion  as  his  critical  faculty 
grows  sensitive,  he  becomes  incapable  of  production 
himself.  For  indeed  his  eye  is  too  often  trained 
rather  to  detect  faults  than  excellences,  and  he  can 
tell  you  where  and  how  a  thing  differs  for  the 
worse  from  established  precedent,  "but  not  where  it 
differs  for  the  better.  This  habit  of  mind  would 
make  him  distrustful  of  himself  and  sterile  in  ori 
ginal  production,  for  his  consciousness  of  how  much 
can  be  said  against  whatever  is  done  and  even  well 
done  reacts  upon  him  and  makes  him  timid.  It  is 
the  rarest  thing  to  find  genius  and  dilettanteism 
united  in  the  same  person  (as  for  a  time  they  were 
in  Goethe),  for  genius  implies  always  a  certain 
fanaticism  of  temperament,  which,  if  sometimes 
it  seem  fitful,  is  yet  capable  of  intense  energy  on 
occasion,  while  the  main  characteristic  of  the  dilet 
tante  is  that  sort  of  impartiality  which  springs  from 
inertia  of  mind,  admirable  for  observation,  inca 
pable  of  turning  it  to  practical  account.  Yet  we 
have,  I  think,  an  example  of  this  rare  combination 
of  qualities  in  Gray,  and  it  accounts  both  for  the 
kind  of  excellence  to  which  he  attained,  and  for  the 
way  in  which  he  disappointed  expectation,  his  own, 


14  GRAY 

I  suspect,  first  of  all.  He  is  especially  interesting 
as  an  artist  in  words  and  phrases,  a  literary  type 
far  less  common  among  writers  of  English,  than  it 
is  in  France  or  Italy,  where  perhaps  the  traditions 
of  Latin  culture  were  never  wholly  lost,  or,  even  if 
they  were,  continued  to  be  operative  by  inheritance 
through  the  form  they  had  impressed  upon  the 
mind.  Born  in  1716,  he  died  in  his  55th  year, 
leaving  behind  him  hardly  fourteen  hundred  verses. 
Dante  was  one  year  older,  Shakespeare,  three  years 
younger  when  he  died.  It  seems  a  slender  monu 
ment,  yet  it  has  endured  and  is  likely  to  endure, 
so  close-grained  is  the  material  and  so  perfect  the 
workmanship.  When  so  many  have  written  too 
much,  we  shall  the  more  readily  pardon  the  rare 
man  who  has  written  too  little  or  just  enough. 

The  incidents  of  Gray's  life  are  few  and  unim 
portant.  Educated  at  Eton  and  diseducated,  as  he 
seemed  to  think,  at  Cambridge,  in  his  twenty-third 
year  he  was  invited  by  Horace  Walpole  to  be  his 
companion  in  a  journey  to  Italy.  At  the  end  of 
two  years  they  quarrelled,  and  Gray  returned  to 
England.  Dr.  Johnson  has  explained  the  causes 
of  this  rupture,  with  his  usual  sturdy  good  sense 
and  knowledge  of  human  nature  :  "  Mr.  Walpole," 
he  says,  "  is  now  content  to  have  it  told  that  it  was 
by  his  fault.  If  we  look,  however,  without  preju 
dice  on  the  world,  we  shall  find  that  men  whose 
consciousness  of  their  own  merit  sets  them  above 
the  compliances  of  servility,  are  apt  enough  in  their 
association  with  superiors  to  watch  their  own  dignity 
with  troublesome  and  punctilious  jealousy,  and  in 


GRA Y  15 

the  fervor  of  independence  to  exact  that  attention 
which  they  refuse  to  pay."  Johnson  was  obeying 
Sidney's  prescription  of  looking  into  his  own  heart 
when  he  wrote  that.  Walpole's  explanation  is  of 
the  same  purport :  "  I  was  young,  too  fond  of  iny 
own  diversion  ;  nay,  I  do  not  doubt  too  much  in 
toxicated  by  indulgence,  vanity,  and  the  insolences 
of  my  situation  as  a  Prime  Minister's  son.  ...  I 
treated  him  insolently.  .  .  .  Forgive  me  if  I  say 
that  his  temper  was  not  conciliating."  They  were 
reconciled  a  few  years  later  and  continued  cour 
teously  friendly  till  Gray's  death.  A  meaner  expla 
nation  of  their  quarrel  has  been  given  by  gossip ; 
that  a  letter  which  Gray  had  written  home  was 
opened  and  read  by  Walpole,  who  found  in  it  some 
thing  not  to  his  own  advantage.  But  the  reconcilia 
tion  sufficiently  refutes  this,  for  if  Gray  could  have 
consented  to  overlook  the  baseness,  Walpole  could 
never  have  forgiven  its  detection. 

Gray  was  a  conscientious  traveller,  as  the  notes 
he  has  left  behind  him  prove.  One  of  these,  on 
the  Borghese  Gallery  at  Rome,  is  so  characteristic 
as  to  be  worth  citing :  "  Several  (Madonnas)  of 
Rafael,  Titian,  Andrea  del  Sarto,  etc.,  but  in  none 
of  them  all  that  heavenly  grace  and  beauty  that 
Guido  gave,  and  that  Carlo  Maratt  has  so  well  im 
itated  in  subjects  of  this  nature."  This  points  to 
an  admission  which  those  who  admire  Gray,  as  I  do, 
are  forced  to  make,  sooner  or  later,  that  there  was 
a  tint  of  effeminacy  in  his  nature.  That  he  should 
have  admired  Norse  poetry,  Ossian,  and  the  Scot 
tish  ballads  is  not  inconsistent  with  this,  but  may 


16  GR  A  Y 

be  explained  by  what  is  called  the  attraction  of 
opposites,  which  means  merely  that  we  are  wont  to 
overvalue  qualities  or  aptitudes  which  we  feel  to 
be  wanting  in  ourselves.  Moreover  these  anti-clas 
sical  yearnings  of  Gray  began  after  he  had  ceased 
producing,  and  it  was  not  unnatural  that  he  should 
admire  men  who  did  without  thinking  what  he 
could  not  do  by  taking  thought.  Elegance,  sweet 
ness,  pathos,  or  even  majesty  he  could  achieve,  but 
never  that  force  which  vibrates  in  every  verse  of 
larger-moulded  men. 

Bonstetten  tells  us  that  "  every  sensation  in 
Gray  was  passionate,"  but  I  very  much  doubt 
whether  he  was  capable  of  that  sustained  passion  of 
the  mind  which  is  fed  by  a  prevailing  imagination 
acting  on  the  consciousness  of  great  powers.  That 
was  something  he  could  never  feel,  though  he 
knew  what  it  meant  by  his  observation  of  others, 
and  longed  to  feel  it.  In  him  imagination  was 
passive ;  it  could  divine  and  select,  but  not  create. 
Bonstetten,  after  seeing  the  best  society  in  Europe 
on  equal  terms,  also  tells  us  that  Gray  was  the  most 
finished  gentleman  he  had  ever  seen.  Is  it  over 
fine  to  see  something  ominous  in  that  V?QY&  finished  ? 
It  seems  to  imply  limitations  ;  to  imply  a  conscious 
ness  that  sees  everything  between  it  and  the  goal 
rather  than  the  goal  itself,  that  undermines  en 
thusiasm  through  the  haunting  doubt  of  being 
undermined.  We  cannot  help  feeling  in  the  poetry 
of  Gray  that  it  too  is  finished,  perhaps  I  should 
rather  say  limited,  as  the  greatest  things  never  are, 
as  it  is  one  of  their  merits  that  they  never  can  be. 


GRAY  17 

They  suggest  more  than  they  bestow,  and  enlarge 
our  apprehension  beyond  their  own  boundaries. 
Gray  shuts  us  in  his  own  contentment  like  a  cathe 
dral  close  or  college  quadrangle.  He  is  all  the 
more  interesting,  perhaps,  that  he  was  a  true  child 
of  his  century,  in  which  decorum  was  religion.  He 
could  not,  as  Dryden  calls  it  in  his  generous  way, 
give  his  soul  a  loose,  although  he  would.  He  is 
of  the  eagle  brood,  but  unfledged.  His  eye  shares 
the  a?ther  which  shall  never  be  cloven  by  his  wing. 
But  it  is  one  of  the  school-boy  blunders  in  criti 
cism  to  deny  one  kind  of  perfection  because  it  is 
not  another.  Gray,  more  than  any  of  our  poets,  has 
shown  what  a  depth  of  sentiment,  how  much  plea 
surable  emotion,  mere  words  are  capable  of  stirring 
through  the  magic  of  association,  and  of  artful 
arrangement  in  conjunction  with  agreeable  and  fa 
miliar  images.  For  Gray  is  pictorial  in  the  highest 
sense  of  the  term,  much  more  than  imaginative. 
Some  passages  in  his  letters  give  us  a  hint  that  he 
might  have  been.  For  example,  he  asks  his  friend 
Stonehewer,  in  1760,  "  Did  you  never  observe 
(li'hile  rockijig  winds  are  piping  loud)  that  pause 
as  the  gust  is  re-collecting  itself  ?  "  But  in  his 
verse  there  is  none  of  that  intuitive  phrase  where 
the  imagination  at  a  touch  precipitates  thought, 
feeling,  and  image  in  an  imperishable  crystal.  He 
knew  imagination  when  he  saw  it ;  no  man  better ; 
he  could  have  scientifically  defined  it ;  but  it  would 
not  root  in  the  artificial  soil  of  his  own  garden, 
though  he  transplanted  a  bit  now  and  then.  Here 
is  an  instance  :  Dryden  in  his  "  Annus  Mirabilis," 


18  GRAY 

hinting  that  Louis  XIV.  would  fain  have  joined 
Holland  against  England,  if  he  dared,  says  :  — 

"  And  threatening  France,  placed  like  a  painted  Jove, 
Held  idle  thunder  in  his  lifted  hand." 

Gray  felt  how  fine  this  was,  and  makes  his 
Agrippina  say  that  it  was  she 

"that  armed 

This  painted  Jove  and  taught  his  novice  hand 
To  aim  the  forked  bolt,  while  he  stood  trembling, 
Scared  at  the  sound  and  dazzled  with  its  brightness." 

Pretty  well,  one  would  say,  for  a  "painted  Jove  " ! 
The  imagination  is  sometimes  super  grammaticam, 
like  the  Emperor  Sigismund,  but  it  is  coherent  by 
the  very  law  of  its  being.1 

Gray  brought  home  from  France  and  Italy  a 
familiar  knowledge  of  their  languages,  and  that  en 
larged  culture  of  the  eye  which  is  one  of  the  insen 
sible,  as  it  is  one  of  the  greatest  gains  of  travel. 
The  adventures  he  details  in  his  letters  are  gen 
erally  such  as  occur  to  all  the  world,  but  there  is 
a  passage  in  one  of  them  in  which  he  describes  a 
scene  at  Rheims  in  1739,  so  curious  and  so  charac 
teristic  of  the  time  as  to  be  worth  citing :  — 

"  The  other  evening  we  happened  to  be  got  together 
in  a  company  of  eighteen  people,  men  and  women  of  the 
best  fashion  here,  at  a  garden  in  the  town  to  walk ;  when 
one  of  the  ladies  bethought  herself  of  asking  'Why 
should  not  we  sup  here  ? '  Immediately  the  cloth  was 

1  It  is  always  interesting  to  trace  the  germs  of  lucky  phrases. 
Dryden  was  familiar  with  the  works  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher, 
and  it  may  be  suspected  that  this  noble  image  was  suggested  by  a 
verse  in  The  Double  Marriage  —  "  Thou  woven  Worthy  in  a  piece 
of  arras." 


GRAY  19 

laid  by  the  side  of  a  fountain  under  the  trees,  and  a  very 
elegant  supper  served  up ;  after  which  another  said, 
'  Come,  let  us  sing,'  and  directly  began  herself ;  from 
singing  we  insensibly  fell  to  dancing  and  singing  in  a 
round,  when  somebody  mentioned  the  violins,  and  imme 
diately  a  company  of  them  was  ordered.  Minuets  were 
begun  in  the  open  air,  and  then  came  country  dances 
which  held  till  four  o'clock  in  the  morning,  at  which 
hour  the  gayest  lady  there  proposed  that  such  as  were 
weary  should  get  into  their  coaches,  and  the  rest  .  .  . 
should  dance  before  them  with  the  music  in  the  van ; 
and  in  this  manner  we  paraded  through  the  principal 
streets  of  the  city  and  waked  everybody  in  it." 

This  recalls  the  garden  of  Boccaccio,  and  if  it  be 
hard  to  fancy  the  "  melancholy  Gray  "  leading  off 
such  a  jig  of  Comus,  it  is  almost  harder  to  conceive 
that  this  was  only  fifty  years  before  the  French 
Revolution.  And  yet  it  was  precisely  this  gay 
insouciance,  this  forgetfulness  that  the  world  ex 
isted  for  any  but  a  single  class  in  it,  and  this  care 
lessness  of  the  comfort  of  others  that  made  the 
catastrophe  possible. 

Immediately  on  his  return  he  went  back  to  Cam 
bridge,  where  he  spent  (with  occasional  absences) 
the  rest  of  his  days,  first  at  Peter  House  and  then 
at  Pembroke  College.  In  1768,  three  years  before 
his  death,  lie  was  appointed  professor  of  Modern 
Literature  and  Languages,  but  he  never  performed 
any  of  its  functions  except  that  of  receiving  the 
salary  —  "  so  did  the  Muse  defend  her  son."  John 
son  describes  him  as  "  always  designing  lectures, 
but  never  reading  them ;  uneasy  at  his  neglect  of 


20  GRAY 

duty  and  appeasing  his  uneasiness  with  designs  of 
reformation  and  with  a  resolution,  which  he  believed 
himself  to  have  made,  of  resigning  the  office,  if  he 
found  himself  unable  to  discharge  it."  This  is  ex 
cellently  well  divined,  for  nobody  knew  better  than 
Johnson  what  a  master  of  casuistry  is  indolence, 
but  I  find  no  trace  of  any  such  feeling  in  Gray's 
correspondence.  After  the  easy-going  fashion  of 
his  day  he  was  more  likely  to  consider  his  salary  as 
another  form  of  pension. 

The  first  poem  of  Gray  that  was  printed  was  the 
"  Ode  on  the  Distant  Prospect  of  Eton  College,"  and 
this  when  he  was  already  thirty-one.  The  "  Elegy  " 
followed  in  1750,  the  other  lesser  odes  in  1753, 
"  The  Progress  of  Poesy  "  and  the  "  Bard  "  in  1757. 
Collins  had  preceded  him  in  this  latter  species  of 
composition,  a  man  of  more  original  imagination 
and  more  fervent  nature,  but  inferior  in  artistic 
instinct.  Mason  gives  a  droll  reason  for  the  suc 
cess  of  the  "  Elegy :  "  "  It  spread  at  first  on  account 
of  the  affecting  and  pensive  cast  of  the  subject  — 
just  like  Hervey's  '  Meditations  on  the  Tombs.' " 
What  Walpole  called  Gray's  flowering  period  ended 
with  his  fortieth  year.  From  that  time  forward  he 
wrote  no  more.  Twelve  years  later,  it  is  true,  he 
writes  to  Walpole :  — 

"  What  has  one  to  do,  when  turned  of  fifty,  but  really 
to  think  of  finishing  ?  .  .  .  However,  I  will  be  candid 
.  .  .  and  avow  to  you  that,  till  fourscore  and  ten,  when 
ever  the  humor  takes  me,  I  will  write  because  I  like  it, 
and  because  I  like  myself  better  when  I  do  so.  If  I  do 
not  write  much  it  is  because  I  cannot." 


GRAY  21 

Chaucer  was  growing  plumper  over  his  "  Canter 
bury  Tales,"  and  the  "  Divina  Commedia  "  was  still 
making  Dante  leaner,  when  both  those  poets  were 
"turned  of  fifty."  Had  Milton  pleaded  the  same 
discharge,  we  should  not  have  had  "  Paradise  Lost " 
and  "  Samson  Agonistes." 

No  doubt  Gray  could  have  written  more  "  if  he 
had  set  himself  doggedly  about  it,"  as  Johnson 
has  recommended  in  such  cases,  but  he  never  did, 
and  I  suspect  that  it  was  this  neglect  rather  than 
that  of  his  lectures  that  irked  him.  The  words 
"  because  I  like  myself  better  when  I  do"  seem  to 
point  in  that  direction.  Bonstetten,  who  knew  him 
a  year  later  than  the  date  of  this  letter,  says :  — 

"  The  poetical  genius  of  Gray  was  so  extinguished  in 
the  gloomy  residence  of  Cambridge  that  the  recollection 
of  his  poems  was  hateful  to  him.  He  never  permitted 
me  to  speak  to  him  about  them.  When  I  quoted  some 
of  his  verses  to  him,  he  held  his  tongue  like  an  obstinate 
child.  I  said  to  him  sometimes,  '  Will  you  not  answer 
me,  then  ?  '  but  no  word  came  from  his  lips.  I  saw  him 
every  evening  from  five  o'clock  till  midnight.  We  read 
Shakespeare,  whom  he  adored,  Dryden,  Pope,  Milton, 
etc.,  and  our  conversations,  like  those  of  friendship, 
knew  no  end.  I  told  Gray  about  my  life  and  my 
country,  but  all  his  own  life  was  shut  from  me.  Never 
did  he  speak  of  himself.  There  was  in  Gray  between 
the  present  and  the  past  an  impassable  abyss.  When  I 
would  have  approached  it,  gloomy  clouds  began  to  cover 
it.  I  believe  that  Gray  had  never  loved ;  this  was  the 
key  to  the  riddle." 

One  cannot  help  wishing  that   Bonstetten  had 


22  GRAY 

Boswellized  some  of  these  endless  conversations, 
for  the  talk  of  Gray  was,  on  the  testimony  of  all 
who  heard  it,  admirable  for  fulness  of  knowledge, 
point,  and  originality  of  thought.  Sainte-Beuve, 
commenting  on  the  words  of  Bonstetten,  says,  with 
his  usual  quick  insight  and  graceful  cleverness  :  — 

"  Je  ne  sais  si  Bonstetten  avait  devine*  juste  et  si  le 
secret  de  la  melancolie  de  Gray  dtait  dans  ce  manque 
d'amour ;  je  le  chercherais  plutot  dans  la  ste'rilite'  d'un 
talent  poe'tique  si  distingue",  si  rare,  mais  si  avare.  Oh ! 
comme  je  le  comprends  mieux,  dans  ce  sens-la,  le  silence 
obstine*  et  boudeur  des  poe'tes  profonds,  arrives  a  un  cer 
tain  age  et  taris,  cette  rancune  encore  aimante  envers  ce 
qu'on  a  tant  aime'  et  qui  ne  reviendra  plus,  cette  douleur 
d'une  ame  orpheline  de  poe'sie  et  qui  ne  veut  pas  etre 
console'e ! " 

But  Sainte-Beuve  was  thinking  rather  of  the  au 
thor  of  a  certain  volume  of  French  poetry  published 
under  the  pseudonym  of  Joseph  Delorme  than  of 
Gray.  Gray  had  been  a  successful  poet,  if  ever 
there  was  one,  for  he  had  pleased  both  the  few  and 
the  many.  There  is  a  great  difference  between 
I  could  if  I  would  and  I  would  if  I  could  in  their 
effect  on  the  mind.  Sainte-Beuve  is  perhaps  partly 
right,  but  it  may  be  fairly  surmised  that  the  re 
morse  for  intellectual  indolence  should  have  had 
some  share  in  making  Gray  unwilling  to  recall  the 
time  when  he  was  better  employed  than  in  filling-in 
coats-of-arms  on  the  margin  of  Dugdale  and  cor 
recting  the  Latin  of  Linnaeus.  I  suspect  that  his 
botany,  his  heraldry,  and  his  weather  -  calendars 
were  mere  expedients  to  make  himself  believe  he 


GRAY  23 

was  doing  something,  and  that  he  might  have  an 
excuse  ready  when  conscience  reproached  him  with 
not  doing  something  he  could  do  better.  He  speaks 
of  "  his  natural  indolence  and  indisposition  to  act," 
in  a  letter  to  Wharton.  Temple  tells  us  that  he 
wished  rather  to  be  looked  on  as  a  gentleman 
than  as  a  man  of  letters,  and  this  may  have  been 
partly  true  at  a  time  when  authorship  was  still 
lodged  in  Grub  Street  and  in  many  cases  deserved 
no  better.  Gray  had  the  admirable  art  of  making 
himself  respected  by  beginning  first  himself.  He 
always  treated  Thomas  Gray  with  the  distinguished 
consideration  he  deserved.  Perhaps  neither  Boii- 
stetten  nor  Sainte-Beuve  was  precisely  the  man  to 
understand  the  more  than  English  reserve  of  Gray, 
the  reserve  of  a  man  as  proud  as  he  was  sensitive. 
And  Gray's  pride  was  not,  as  it  sometimes  is,  allied 
to  vanity ;  it  was  personal  rather  than  social,  if 
I  may  attempt  a  distinction  which  I  feel  but  can 
hardly  define.  After  he  became  famous,  one  of 
the  several  Lords  Gray  claimed  kindred  with  him, 
perhaps  I  should  say  was  willing  that  he  should 
claim  it,  on  the  ground  of  a  similarity  of  arms. 
Gray  preferred  his  own  private  distinction,  and 
would  not  admit  their  lordships  to  any  partner 
ship  in  it.  Michael  Angelo,  who  fancied  himself  a 
proud  man,  was  in  haste  to  believe  a  purely  imagi 
nary  pedigree  that  derived  him  from  the  Counts  of 
Canossa. 

That  I  am  right  in  saying  that  Gray's  melan 
choly  was  in  part  remorse  at  (if  I  may  not  say  the 
waste)  the  abeyance  of  his  powers,  may  be  read 


24  GRAY 

between  the  lines  (I  think)  in  more  than  one  of 
his  letters.  His  constant  endeavor  was  to  occupy 
himself  in  whatever  would  save  him  from  the  reflec 
tion  of  how  he  might  occupy  himself  better.  "  To 
find  one's  self  business,"  he  says,  "  (I  am  per 
suaded),  is  the  great  art  of  life.  .  .  .  Some  spirit, 
some  genius  (more  than  common)  is  required  to 
teach  a  man  how  to  employ  himself."  And  else 
where  :  "  to  be  employed  is  to  be  happy,"  which 
was  a  saying  he  borrowed  of  Swift,  another  self- 
dissatisfied  man.  Bonstetten  says  in  French  that 
"  his  mind  was  gay  and  his  character  melancholy."" 
In  German  he  substitutes  "  soul"  for  "character." 
He  was  cheerful,  that  is,  in  any  company  but  his 
own,  and  this,  it  may  be  guessed,  because  faculties 
were  called  into  play  which  he  had  not  the  innate 
force  to  rouse  into  more  profitable  activity.  Gray's 
melancholy  was  that  of  Richard  II. :  — 

"  I  wasted  time,  and  now  doth  time  waste  me, 
For  now  hath  time  made  me  his  numbering-clock." 

Whatever  the  cause,  it  began  about  the  time 
when  he  had  finally  got  his  two  great  odes  off  his 
hands.  At  first  it  took  the  form  of  resignation,  as 
when  he  writes  to  Mason  in  1757 :  — 

"  I  can  only  tell  you  that  one  who  has  far  more  reason 
than  you,  I  hope,  will  ever  have  to  look  on  life  with 
something  worse  than  indifference,  is  yet  no  enemy  to  it, 
but  can  look  backward  on  many  bitter  moments,  partly 
with  satisfaction,  and  partly  with  patience,  and  forward, 
too,  on  a  scene  not  very  promising,  with  some  hope  and 
some  expectation  of  a  better  day." 

But  it  is  only  fair  to  give  his  own  explanation  of 


GRAY  25 

his  unproductiveness.     He  writes  to  Wharton,  who 
had  asked  him  for  an  epitaph  on  a  child  just  lost :  — 

"  I  by  no  means  pretend  to  inspiration,  but  yet  I 
affirm  that  the  faculty  in  question  is  by  no  means  volun 
tary.  It  is  the  result,  I  suppose,  of  a  certain  disposition 
of  mind  which  does  not  depend  on  one's  self,  and  which 
I  have  not  felt  this  long  time." 

In  spite  of  this,  however,  it  should  be  remem 
bered  that  the  motive  power  always  becomes  slug 
gish  in  men  who  too  easily  admit  the  supremacy  of 
moods.  But  an  age  of  common  sense  would  very 
greatly  help  such  a  man  as  Gray  to  distrust  him 
self. 

If  Gray  ceased  to  write  poetry,  let  us  be  thank 
ful  that  he  continued  to  write  letters.  Cowper,  the 
poet,  a  competent  judge,  for  he  wrote  excellent 
letters  himself,  and  therefore  had  studied  the  art, 
says,  writing  to  Hill  in  1777  :  — 

';  I  once  thought  Swift's  letters  the  best  that  could  be 
written  ;  but  I  like  Gray's  better.  His  humor,  or  his 
wit,  or  whatever  it  is  to  be  called,  is  never  ill-natured  or 
offensive,  and  yet,  I  think,  equally  poignant  with  the 
Dean's." 

I  think  the  word  that  Cowper  was  at  a  loss  for 
was  playfulness,  the  most  delightful  ingredient  in 
letters,  for  Gray  can  hardly  be  said  to  have  had 
humor  in  the  deeper  sense  of  the  word.  The  near 
est  approach  to  it  I  remember  is  where  he  writes 
(as  Lamb  would  have  written)  to  AValpole  suffer 
ing  with  the  gout :  "  The  pain  in  your  feet  I  can 
bear. "  He  has  the  knack  of  saying  droll  things 


26  GRA Y 

in  an  off-hand  way,  and  as  if  they  cost  him  nothing. 
It  is  only  the  most  delicately  trained  hand  that  can 
venture  on  this  playful  style,  easy  as  it  seems,  with 
out  danger  of  a  catastrophe,  and  Gray's  perfect 
elegance  could  nowhere  have  found  a  more  admi 
rable  foil  than  in  the  vulgar  jauntiness  and  clumsy 
drollery  of  his  correspondent,  Mason.  Let  me  cite 
an  example  or  two. 

He  writes  to  Wharton,  1753  :  — 

"  I  take  it  ill  you  should  say  anything  against  the 
Mole.  It  is  a  reflection,  I  see,  cast  at  the  Thames.  Do 
you  think  that  rivers  which  have  lived  in  London  and  its 
neighbourhood  all  their  days  will  run  roaring  and  tum 
bling  about  like  your  tramontane  torrents  in  the  North  ?  " 

To  Brown,  1767  :  — 

"  Pray  that  the  Trent  may  not  intercept  us  at  Newark, 
for  we  have  had  infinite  rain  here,  and  they  say  every 
brook  sets  up  for  a  river." 

Of  the  French,  he  writes  to  Walpole,  in  Paris :  — 

"I  was  much  entertained  with  your  account  of  our 
neighbours.  As  an  Englishman  and  an  anti-Gallican,  I 
rejoice  at  their  dulness  and  their  nastiness,  though  I 
fear  we  shall  come  to  imitate  them  in  both.  Their  athe 
ism  is  a  little  too  much,  too  shocking  to  be  rejoiced  at. 
I  have  long  been  sick  at  it  in  their  authors  arid  hated 
them  for  it ;  but  I  pity  their  poor  innocent  people  of 
fashion.  They  were  bad  enough  when  they  believed 
everything." 

Of  course  it  is  difficult  to  give  instances  of  a 
thing  in  its  nature  so  evanescent,  yet  so  subtly  per 
vasive,  as  what  we  call  tone.  I  think  it  is  in  this, 


GRA Y  27 

if  in  anything,  that  Gray's  letters  are  on  the  whole 
superior  to  Swift's.  This  playfulness  of  Gray  very 
easily  becomes  tenderness  on  occasion,  and  even 
pathos. 

Writing  to  his  friend  Nicholls  in  1765,  he  says : 

"  It  is  long  since  I  heard  you  were  gone  in  haste  into 
Yorkshire  on  account  of  your  mother's  iUness,  and  the 
same  letter  informed  me  she  was  recovered.  Otherwise 
I  had  then  wrote  to  you  only  to  beg  you  would  take 
care  of  her,  and  to  inform  you  that  I  had  discovered  a 
thing  very  little  known,  which  is,  that  in  one's  whole 
life  one  can  never  have  any  more  than  a  single  mother. 
You  may  think  this  obvious  and  (what  you  call)  a  trite 
observation.  .  .  .  You  are  a  green  gosling !  I  was  at 
the  same  age  (very  near)  as  wise  as  you,  and  yet  I  never 
discovered  this  (with  full  evidence  and  conviction,  I 
mean)  till  it  was  too  late.  It  is  thirteen  years  ago  and 
it  seems  but  as  yesterday,  and  every  day  I  live  it  sinks 
deeper  into  my  heart." 

In  his  letters  of  condolence,  perhaps  the  most 
arduous  species  of  all  composition,  Gray  shows  the 
same  exquisite  tact  which  is  his  distinguishing  char 
acteristic  as  a  poet.  And  he  shows  it  by  never 
attempting  to  console.  Perhaps  his  notions  on  this 
matter  may  be  divined  in  what  he  writes  to  Wal- 
pole  about  Lyttelton's  "  Elegy  on  his  Wife  :  " 

"  I  am  not  totally  of  your  mind  as  to  Mr.  Lyttelton's 
elegy,  though  I  love  kids  and  fawns  as  little  as  you  do. 
If  it  were  all  like  the  fourth  stanza  I  should  be  exces 
sively  pleased.  Nature  and  sorrow  and  tenderness  are 
the  true  genius  of  such  things  ;  and  something  of  these 
I  find  in  several  parts  of  it  (not  in  the  orange  tree)  ; 


28  GRAY 

poetical  ornaments  are  foreign  to  the  purpose,  for  they 
only  show  a  man  is  not  sorry ;  and  devotion  worse,  for 
it  teaches  him  that  he  ought  not  to  be  sorry,  which  is  all 
the  pleasure  of  the  thing." 

And  to  Mason  he  writes  in  September,  1753  :  — 

"  I  know  what  it  is  to  lose  a  person  that  one's  eyes 
and  heart  have  long  been  used  to,  and  I  never  desire  to 
part  with  the  remembrance  of  that  loss."  (His  mother 
died  in  the  March  of  that  year.) 

Gray's  letters  also  are  a  mine  of  acute  observa 
tion  and  sharply-edged  criticism  upon  style,  espe 
cially  those  to  Mason  and  Beattie.  His  obiter 
dicta  have  the  weight  of  wide  reading  and  much 
reflection  by  a  man  of  delicate  apprehension  and 
tenacious  memory  for  principles.  "  Mr.  Gray 
used  to  say,"  Mason  tells  us,  "  that  good  writing 
not  only  required  great  parts,  but  the  very  best  of 
those  parts." 1  I  quote  a  few  of  his  sayings  almost 
at  random :  — 

"  Have  you  read  Clarendon's  book  ?  Do  you  remem 
ber  Mr.  Cambridge's  account  of  it  before  it  came  out  ? 
How  well  he  recollected  all  the  faults,  and  how  utterly 
he  forgot  all  the  beauties  ?  Surely  the  grossest  taste  is 
better  than  such  a  sort  of  delicacy." 

"  I  think  even  a  bad  verse  as  good  a  thing  or  better 
than  the  best  observation  that  ever  was  made  upon  it." 

1  This,  perhaps,  suggested  to  Coleridge  his  admirable  defini 
tion  of  the  distinction  between  the  language  of  poetry  and  of 
prose.  It  is  almost  certain  that  Coleridge  learned  from  Gray  his 
nicety  in  the  use  of  vowel-sounds  and  the  secret  that  in  a  verse  it 
is  the  letter  that  giveth  life  quite  as  often  as  the  spirit.  Many 
poets  have  been  intuitively  lucky  in  the  practice  of  this  art,  but 
Gray  had  formulated  it. 


GRA Y  29 

"  Half  a  word  fixed  upon  or  near  the  spot  is  worth  a 
cart-load  of  recollection."  (He  is  speaking  of  descrip 
tions  of  scenery,  but  what  he  says  is  of  wider  applica 
tion.) 

"  Froissart  is  the  Herodotus  of  a  barbarous  age." 
"  Jeremy  Taylor  is  the  Shakespeare  of  divines." 
"  I  rejoice  when  I  see  Machiavel  defended  or  illus 
trated,  who  to  me  appears  one  of  the  wisest  men  that 
any  nation  in  any  age  has  produced." 

"  In  truth,  Shakespeare's  language  is  one  of  his  prin 
cipal  beauties,  and  he  has  no  less  advantage  over  your 
Addisons  and  Rowes  in  this  than  in  those  other  great 
excellencies  you  mention.     Every  word  in  him  is  a  pic 
ture." 

Of  Dryden  lie  said  to  Beattie :  — 

"  That  if  there  was  any  excellence  in  his  own  num 
bers  he  had  learned  it  wholly  from  that  great  poet,  and 
pressed  him  with  great  earnestness  to  study,  as  his 
choice  of  words  and  [his]  versification  were  singularly 
happy  and  harmonious." 

And  again  he  says  in  a  postscript  to  Beattie :  — 
"  Remember  Dryden,  and  be  blind  to  all  his  faults." 
To  Mason  he  writes  :  — 

"  All  I  can  say  is  that  your  '  Elegy  '  must  not  end  with 
the  worst  line  in  it ;  it  is  flat,  it  is  prose ;  whereas  that, 
above  all,  ought  to  sparkle,  or  at  least  to  shine.  If  the 
sentiment  must  stand,  twirl  it  a  little  into  an  apothegm, 
stick  a  flower  in  it,  gild  it  with  a  costly  expression  ;  let 
it  strike  the  fancy,  the  ear,  or  the  heart,  and  I  am 
satisfied." 

Gray  and  Mason  together,  however,  could  not 
make  the  latter  a  poet ! 


80  GRAY 

11  Now  I  insist  that  sense  is  nothing  in  poetry,  but 
according  to  the  dress  she  wears  and  the  scene  she 
appears  in." 

"  I  have  got  the  old  Scotch  ballad  on  which  <  Douglas ' 
[Home's]  was  founded  ;  it  is  divine,  and  as  long  as 
from  hence  to  Ashton.  Have  you  never  seen  it  ?  Aris 
totle's  best  rules  are  observed  in  it  in  a  manner  that 
shows  the  author  never  had  heard  of  Aristotle." 

"  This  latter  [speaking  of  a  passage  in  '  Caractacus  '  ] 
is  exemplary  for  the  expression  (always  the  great  point 
with  me)  ;  I  do  not  mean  by  expression  the  mere  choice 
of  words,  but  the  whole  dress,  fashion,  and  arrangement 
of  a  thought." 

"Extreme  conciseness  of  expression,  yet  pure,  per 
spicuous,  and  musical,  is  one  of  the  grand  beauties  of 
lyric  poetry ;  this  I  have  always  aimed  at  and  never 
could  attain." 

Of  his  own  Agrippina  lie  says  :  — 

"  She  seemed  to  me  to  talk  like  an  old  boy  all  in 
figures  and  mere  poetry,  instead  of  nature  and  the  lan 
guage  of  real  passion." 

Of  the  minuteness  of  his  care  in  matters  of  ex 
pression  an  example  or  two  will  suffice.  Writing 
to  Mason  lie  says  :  — 

"  Sure  ( seers  '  comes  over  too  often  ;  besides,  it  sounds 
ill."  "  Plann'd  is  a  nasty  stiff  word."  "  I  cannot  give 
up  '  lost '  for  it  begins  with  an  £." 

Yet  Gray's  nice  ear  objected  to  "  vain  vision  " 
as  hard. 

It  may  be  asked  if  those  minutiae  of  alliteration 
and  of  close  or  open  vowel-sounds  are  consistent 
with  anything  like  that  ecstasy  of  mind,  from 


GRA Y  31 

which  the  highest  poetry  is  supposed  to  spring, 
and  which  it  is  its  function  to  reproduce  in  the 
mind  of  the  reader.  But  whoever  would  write 
well  must  learn  to  write.  Shelley  was  almost  as 
great  a  corrector  of  his  own  verses  as  Pope.  Even 
in  Shakespeare  we  can  trace  the  steps  and  even  the 
models  by  which  he  arrived  at  that  fatality  of 
phrase  which  seems  like  immediate  inspiration. 
One  at  least  of  the  objects  of  writing  is  (or  was) 
to  be  read,  and,  other  things  being  equal,  the  best 
writers  are  those  who  make  themselves  most  easily 
readable.  Gray's  great  claim  to  the  rank  he  holds 
is  derived  from  his  almost  unrivalled  skill  as  an 
artist,  in  words  and  sounds ;  as  an  artist,  too,  who 
knew  how  to  compose  his  thoughts  and  images 
with  a  thorough  knowledge  of  perspective.  This 
explains  why  he  is  so  easy  to  remember ;  why, 
though  he  wrote  so  little,  so  much  of  what  he 
wrote  is  familiar  on  men's  tongues.  There  are 
certain  plants  that  have  seeds  with  hooks  by  which 
they  cling  to  any  passing  animal  and  impress  his 
legs  into  the  service  of  their  locomotion  and  dis 
tribution.  Gray's  phrases  have  the  same  gift  of 
hooking  themselves  into  the  memory,  and  it  was 
due  to  the  exquisite  artifice  of  their  construc 
tion.  His  "Elegy,"  certainly  not  through  any 
originality  of  thought,  but  far  more  through  origi 
nality  of  sound,  has  charmed  all  ears  from  the  day 
it  was  published ;  and  the  measure  in  which  it  is 
written,  though  borrowed  by  Gray  of  Dryden,  by 
Dryden  of  Davenant,  by  Davenant  of  Davies,  and 
by  him  of  Raleigh,  is  ever  since  associated  with 


32  GRAY 

that  poem  as  if  by  some  exclusive  right  of  prop 
erty.  Perhaps  the  great  charm  of  the  "  Elegy  "  is 
to  be  found  in  its  embodying  that  pensively  sting- 
less  pessimism  which  comes  with  the  first  gray 
hair ;  that  vague  sympathy  with  ourselves,  which  is 
so  much  cheaper  than  sympathy  with  others  ;  that 
placid  melancholy  which  satisfies  the  general  ap 
petite  for  an  emotion  which  titillates  rather  than 
wounds. 

The  "Progress  of  Poesy"  and  "The  Bard" 
made  their  way  more  slowly,  though  the  judgment 
of  the  elect  (the  <Warot  to  whom  Gray  proudly 
appealed)  placed  them  at  the  head  of  English  lyric 
poetry.  By  the  majority  they  were  looked  on  as  di 
vine  in  the  sense  that  they  were  past  all  understand 
ing.  Goldsmith  criticised  them  in  the  "  Monthly 
Eeview,"  and  a  few  passages  of  his  article  are 
worth  quoting  as  coming  from  him :  — 

"  We  cannot,  however,  without  some  regret,  behold 
those  talents  so  capable  of  giving  pleasure  to  all,  exerted 
in  efforts  that,  at  best,  can  amuse  only  the  few ;  we 
cannot  behold  this  rising  poet  seeking  fame  among  the 
learned,  without  hinting  to  him  the  same  advice  that 
Isocrates  used  to  give  his  pupils,  '  Study  the  people.' 
.  .  .  He  speaks  to  a  people  not  easily  impressed  with 
new  ideas  ;  extremely  tenacious  of  the  old ;  with  diffi 
culty  warmed  and  as  slowly  cooling  again.  How  un- 
suited,  then,  to  our  national  character  is  that  species  of 
poetry  which  rises  on  us  with  unexpected  flights  ;  where 
we  must  hastily  catch  the  thought  or  it  flies  from  us  ; 
and  in  short,  where  the  reader  must  largely  partake  of 
the  poet's  enthusiasm  in  order  to  taste  his  beauties  ! 
.  .  .  These  two  odes,  it  must  be  confessed,  breathe  much 


GRA Y  33 

of  the  spirit  of  Pindar ;  but  then  they  have  caught  the 
seeming  obscurity,  the  sudden  transition  and  hazardous 
epithet  of  the  mighty  master,  all  which,  though  evidently 
intended  for  beauties,  will  probably  be  regarded  as 
blemishes  by  the  generality  of  readers.  In  short,  they 
are  in  some  measure  a  representation  of  what  Pindar 
now  appears  to  be,  though  perhaps  not  what  he  ap 
peared  to  the  States  of  Greece." 

Goldsmith  preferred  "  The  Bard  "  to  the  "  Prog 
ress  of  Poesy."  We  seem  to  see  him  willing  to 
praise  and  yet  afraid  to  like.  He  is  possessed  by 
the  true  spirit  of  his  age.  For  my  part  I  think  I 
see  as  much  influence  of  the  Italian  "  Canzone  "  as 
of  Pindar  in  these  odes.  Nor  would  they  be  better 
for  being  more  like  Pindar.  Ought  not  a  thing 
once  thoroughly  well  done  to  be  left  conscientiously 
alone  ?  And  was  it  not  Gray's  object  that  these 
odes  should  have  something  of  the  same  inspiring 
effect  on  English-speaking  men  as  those  others  on 
Greek-speaking  men?  To  give  the  same  lift  to 
the  fancy  and  feeling?  Goldsmith  unconsciously 
gave  them  the  right  praise  when  he  said  they  had 
"  caught  the  spirit  "  of  the  elder  poet.  I  remem 
ber  hearing  Emerson  say  some  thirty  years  ago, 
that  he  valued  Gray  chiefly  as  a  comment  on 
Pindar. 

Gray  himself  seems  to  have  kept  his  balance 
very  well ;  indeed,  it  may  be  conjectured  that  he 
knew  the  shortcomings  of  his  work  better  than 
any  one  else  could  have  told  him  of  them.  He 
writes  to  Kurd  :  — 

"As  your  acquaintance  in  the  University  (you  say) 


34  GRA Y 

do  me  the  honor  to  admire,  it  would  be  ungenerous 
in  me  not  to  give  them  notice  that  they  are  doing  a 
very  unfashionable  thing,  for  all  People  of  Condition 
are  agreed  not  to  admire,  nor  even  to  understand.  One 
very  great  man,  writing  to  an  acquaintance  of  his  and 
mine,  says  that  he  had  read  them  seven  or  eight  times, 
and  that  now,  when  he  next  sees  him,  he  shall  not 
have  above  thirty  questions  to  ask.  Another,  a  peer, 
believes  that  the  last  stanza  of  the  second  Ode  relates  to 
King  Charles  the  First  and  Oliver  Cromwell.  Even 
my  friends  tell  me  they  do  not  succeed,  and  write  me 
moving  topics  of  consolation  on  that  head.  In  short,  I 
have  heard  of  nobody  but  an  actor  and  a  Doctor  of  Divin 
ity  that  profess  their  esteem  for  them.  Oh  yes,  a  lady 
of  quality  (a  friend  of  Mason's),  who  is  a  great  reader. 
She  knew  there  was  a  compliment  to  Dryden,  but  never 
suspected  there  was  anything  said  about  Shakespeare 
and  Milton,  till  it  was  explained  to  her ;  and  wishes  that 
there  had  been  titles  prefixed  to  tell  what  they  were 
about." 

If  the  success  of  the  Odes  was  not  such  as  to  en 
courage  Gray  to  write  more,  they  certainly  added 
to  his  fame  and  made  their  way  to  admiration  in 
France  and  Italy. 

The  fate  of  Gray  since  his  death  has  been  a 
singular  one.  He  has  been  underrated  both  by 
the  Apostles  of  Common  Sense  and  of  Imagina 
tion,  by  Johnson,  and  Wordsworth.  Johnson  was 
in  an  uncommonly  surly  mood  even  for  him  when 
he  wrote  his  life  of  Gray.  He  blames  and  praises 
him  for  the  same  thing.  He  makes  it  a  fault  in 
ihe  "  Ode  on  the  Distant  Prospect  of  Eton  College," 
that  "  the  prospect  .  .  .  suggests  nothing  to  Gray 


GRAY  35 

which  every  beholder  does  not  equally  think  and 
feel ;  "  and  a  merit  of  the  "  Elegy,"  that "  it  abounds 
with  images  which  find  a  mirror  in  every  mind, 
and  with  sentiments  to  which  every  bosom  returns 
an  echo."  This  no  doubt  is  one  of  the  chief  praises 
of  Gray,  as  of  other  poets,  that  he  is  the  voice  of 
emotions  common  to  all  mankind.  "  Tell  me  what 
I  feel,"  is  what  everybody  asks  of  the  poet.  But 
surely  it  makes  some  difference  how  we  are  told. 
It  is  one  proof  how  good  a  thing  is  that  it  looks  so 
easy  after  it  is  done.  Johnson  growls  also  at  Mr. 
Walpole's  cat,  as  if  he  were  one  of  the  race  which 
is  the  hereditary  foe  of  that  animal.  He  hits  a 
blot  when  he  criticises  "  the  azure  flowers  that 
blow,"  but  is  blind  to  the  easy  fancy,  the  almost 
feline  grace  of  the  whole,  with  its  playful  claws  of 
satire  sheathed  in  velvet. 

Wordsworth  in  his  famous  Preface  attacks  Gray 
as  "the  head  of  those  who  by  their  reasonings 
have  attempted  to  widen  the  space  of  separation 
betwixt  prose  and  metrical  composition  "  [he  means 
betwixt  the  language  of  the  two] ,  "  and  was  more 
than  any  other  man  curiously  elaborate  in  the 
structure  of  his  own  poetic  diction."  He  then 
quotes  Gray's  sonnet  on  the  death  of  his  friend 
West. 

' '  In  vain  to  me  the  smiling  mornings  shine, 
And  reddening  Phoebus  lifts  his  golden  fire  ; 
The  birds  in  vain  their  amorous  descant  join, 
Or  cheerful  fields  resume  their  ga-een  attire  ; 
These  ears,  alas,  for  other  notes  repine, 
A  different  object  do  these  eyes  require  : 
My  lonely  anguish  melts  no  heart  but  mine; 
And  in  my  breast  the  imperfect  joys  expire. 


36  GRA Y 

Yet  morning  smiles  the  busy  race  to  cheer, 
And  newborn  pleasure  springs  to  happier  men ; 
The  fields  to  all  their  wonted  tribute  bear ; 
To  warm  their  little  loves  the  birds  complain  ; 
I  fruitless  mourn  to  him  that  cannot  hear, 
And  weep  the  more  because  I  weep  in  vain." 

"  It  will  easily  be  perceived  that  the  only  part  of 
this  sonnet  which  is  of  any  value  is  the  lines  printed 
in  italics ;  it  is  equally  obvious  that  except  in  the 
rhyme  and  in  the  use  of  the  single  word  4  fruit 
less  '  for  4  fruitlessly,'  which  is  so  far  a  defect,  the 
language  of  these  lines  does  in  110  respect  differ 
from  that  of  prose."  I  think  this  criticism  a  little 
ungracious,  for  it  would  not  be  easy  to  find  many 
sonnets  (even  of  Wordsworth's  own)  with  five 
first-rate  verses  out  of  the  fourteen.  But  what  is 
most  curious  is  that  Wordsworth  should  not  have 
seen  that  this  very  sonnet  disproves  the  theory  of 
diction  with  which  he  charges  him.  I  cannot  find 
that  he  had  any  such  theory.  He  does,  indeed,  say 
somewhere  that  the  language  of  the  age  is  never 
the  language  of  poetry,  which  if  taken  as  he  under 
stood  it  is  true,  but  I  know  not  where  Wordsworth 
found  his  "  reasonings."  Gray  by  the  language 
of  the  age  meant  the  language  of  conversation, 
for  he  goes  on  to  say,  "  Except  among  the  French, 
whose  verse,  where  the  thought  or  image  does  not 
support  it,  differs  in  nothing  from  prose."  Gray's 
correspondence  with  Mason  proves  that  he  had  no 
such  theory.  Let  a  pair  of  instances  suffice. 

"  There  is  an  affectation  in  so  often  using  the 
old  phrase  4  or  ere  '  for  4  before.' '  "  Intellect  is 
a  word  of  science  and  therefore  inferior  to  any 


GRAY  37 

more  common  word."  Wordsworth  should  have 
had  more  sympathy  with  a  man  who  loved  moun 
tains  as  well  as  he,  and  not  wholly  in  the  eighteenth- 
century  fashion  either.  "  Not  a  precipice,  not  a 
torrent,  not  a  cliff,"  writes  Gray  from  the  Grande 
Chartreuse,  "but  is  pregnant  with  religion  and 
poetry."  That  was  Wordsworth's  own  very  view, 
his  ownty-downty  view  one  is  sometimes  tempted 
to  call  it,  when  he  won't  let  anybody  else  have  a 
share  in  it. 

After  a  journey  in  Scotland  :  — 

"  The  Lowlands  are  worth  seeing  once,  but  the  moun 
tains  are  ecstatic  and  ought  to  be  visited  in  pilgrimage 
once  a  year.  None  but  those  monstrous  creatures  of  God 
know  how  to  join  so  much  beauty  with  so  much  horror. 
A  fig  for  your  poets,  painters,  gardeners,  and  clergymen 
that  have  not  been  among  them ;  their  imagination  can 
be  made  up  of  nothing  but  bowling-greens,  flowering- 
shrubs,  horse-ponds,  Fleet-ditches,  shell-grottoes,  and 
Chinese  rails." 

Sir  James  Mackintosh  says  that  Gray  first  traced 
out  every  picturesque  tour  in  Britain,  and  Gray 
was  a  perpetual  invalid.  He  discovered  the  Wye 
before  Wordsworth,  and  floated  down  it  in  a  boat, 
"near  forty  miles,  surrounded  with  ever-new  de 
lights  ;  "  nay,  it  was  he  who  made  known  the  Lake 
region  to  the  Lakers  themselves.  Wordsworth,  I 
can't  help  thinking,  had  a  little  unconscious  jeal 
ousy  of  Gray,  whose  fame  as  the  last  great  poet 
was  perhaps  somewhat  obtrusive  when  Words 
worth  was  at  the  University.  His  last  word  about 
him  is  in  a  letter  to  Gillies  in  1816. 


38  GRAY 

"  Gray  failed  as  a  poet  not  because  he  took  too  much 
pains  and  so  extinguished  his  animation,  but  because  he 
had  very  little  of  that  fiery  quality  to  begin  with,  and 
his  pains  were  of  the  wrong  sort.  He  wrote  English 
verses  as  his  brother  Eton  schoolboys  wrote  Latin,  filch 
ing  a  phrase  now  from  one  author  and  now  from  an 
other.  I  do  not  profess  to  be  a  person  of  very  various 
reading ;  nevertheless,  if  I  were  to  pluck  out  of  Gray's 
tail  all  of  the  feathers  which  I  know  belong  to  other 
birds,  he  would  be  left  very  bare  indeed.  Do  not  let  any 
body  persuade  you  that  any  quantity  of  good  verses  can 
be  produced  by  mere  felicity ;  or  that  an  immortal  style 
can  be  the  growth  of  mere  genius.  *  Multa  tulit  fecit- 
que '  must  be  the  motto  of  all  those  who  are  to  last."  l 

What  would  be  left  to  Gray  after  this  plucking 
would  be  Ms  genius,  for  genius  he  certainly  had, 
or  he  could  not  have  produced  the  effect  of  it.  The 
gentle  Cowper,  no  bad  critic  also  he,  was  kinder. 

"  I  have  been  reading  Gray's  works,"  he  says,  "  and 
think  him  the  only  poet  since  Shakespeare  entitled  to  the 
character  of  sublime.  Perhaps  you  will  remember  that 
I  once  had  a  different  opinion  of  him.  I  was  preju 
diced." 

In  spite  of  unjust  depreciation  and  misapplied 
criticism,  Gray  holds  his  own  and  bids  fair  to  last 

1  I  need  not  point  out  that  Wordsworth  is  a  little  confused,  if 
not  self -contradictory  in  this  criticism.  I  will  add  only  two  quo 
tations  to  show  that  accidents  will  happen  to  the  best-regulated 
poets :  — 

"  At  distance  heard  the  murmur  of  many  waterfalls  not  audible 
in  the  day-time."  —  Gray  to  Wharton,  1769. 

"  A  soft  and  lulling  sound  is  heard 
Of  streams  inaudible  by  day."  —  White  Doe. 

Gray  probably  guided  Wordsworth  to  the  vein  of  gold  in  Dyer. 


GRAY  39 

as  long  as  the  language  which  he  knew  how  to  write 
so  well  and  of  which  he  is  one  of  the  glories. 
Wordsworth  is  justified  in  saying  that  he  helped 
himself  from  everybody  and  everywhere  —  and  yet 
he  made  such  admirable  use  of  what  he  stole  (if 
theft  there  was)  that  we  should  as  soon  think  of 
finding  fault  with  a  man  for  pillaging  the  diction 
ary.  He  mixed  himself  with  whatever  he  took  — 
an  incalculable  increment.  In  the  editions  of  his 
poems,  the  thin  line  of  text  stands  at  the  top  of 
the  page  like  cream,  and  below  it  is  the  skim-milk 
drawn  from  many  milky  mothers  of  the  herd  out 
of  which  it  has  risen.  But  the  thing  to  be  con 
sidered  is  that,  no  matter  where  the  material  came 
from,  the  result  is  Gray's  own.  Whether  original 
or  not,  he  knew  how  to  make  a  poem,  a  very  rare 
knowledge  among  men.  The  thought  in  Gray  is 
neither  uncommon  nor  profound,  and  you  may  call 
it  beatified  commonplace  if  you  choose.  I  shall  not 
contradict  you.  I  have  lived  long  enough  to  know 
that  there  is  a  vast  deal  of  commonplace  in  the 
world  of  no  particular  use  to  anybody,  and  am 
thankful  to  the  man  who  has  the  divine  gift  to 
idealize  it  for  me.  Nor  am  I  offended  with  this 
odor  of  the  library  that  hangs  about  Gray,  for  it 
recalls  none  but  delightful  associations.  It  was  in 
the  very  best  literature  that  Gray  was  steeped,  and 
I  am  glad  that  bcth  he  and  we  should  profit  by  it. 
If  he  appropriated  a  fine  phrase  wherever  he  found 
it,  it  was  by  right  of  eminent  domain,  for  surely 
he  was  one  of  the  masters  of  language.  His  praise 
is  that  what  he  touched  was  idealized,  and  kindled 


40  GRAY 

with  some  virtue  that  was  not  there  before,  but 
came  from  him. 

And  he  was  the  most  conscientious  of  artists. 
Some  of  the  verses  which  he  discards  in  deference 
to  this  conscientiousness  of  form  which  sacrifices 
the  poet  to  the  poem,  the  parts  to  the  whole,  and 
regards  nothing  but  the  effect  to  be  produced,  would 
have  nrade  the  fortune  of  another  poet.  Take  for 
example  this  stanza  omitted  from  the  "  Elegy  "  (just 
before  the  Epitaph),  because,  says  Mason,  "he 
thought  it  was  too  long  a  parenthesis  in  this 
place." 

"  There  scattered  oft,  the  earliest  of  the  year, 
By  hands  unseen  are  showers  of  violets  found ; 
The  redbreast  loves  to  build  and  warble  there, 
And  little  footsteps  lightly  print  the  ground." 

Gray  might  run  his  pen  through  this,  but  he 
could  not  obliterate  it  from  the  memory  of  men. 
Surely  Wordsworth  himself  never  achieved  a  sim 
plicity  of  language  so  pathetic  in  suggestion,  so 
musical  in  movement  as  this. 

Any  slave  of  the  mine  may  find  the  rough  gem, 
but  it  is  the  cutting  and  polishing  that  reveal  its 
heart  of  fire  ;  it  is  the  setting  that  makes  of  it 
a  jewel  to  hang  at  the  ear  of  Time.  If  Gray  cull 
his  words  and  phrases  here,  there,  and  everywhere, 
it  is  he  who  charges  them  with  the  imaginative  or 
picturesque  touch  which  only  he  could  give  and 
which  makes  them  magnetic.  For  example,  in 
these  two  verses  of  "  The  Bard  :  "  — 

"  Amazement  in  his  van  with  Flight  combined, 
And  Sorrow's  faded  form  and  Solitude  behind  !  " 


GRA Y  41 

The  suggestion  (we  are  informed  by  the  notes) 
came  from  Cowper  and  Oldham,  and  the  amaze 
ment  combined  with  flight  sticks  fast  in  prose.  But 
the  personification  of  Sorrow  and  the  fine  general 
ization  of  Solitude  in  the  last  verse  which  gives  an 
imaginative  reach  to  the  whole  passage  are  Gray's 
own.  The  owners  of  what  Gray  "  conveyed " 
would  have  found  it  hard  to  identify  their  property 
and  prove  title  to  it  after  it  had  once  suffered  the 
Gray-change  by  steeping  in  his  mind  and  memory. 

When  the  example  in  our  Latin  Grammar  tells 
us  that  JHfors  communis  est  omnibus,  it  states  a 
truism  of  considerable  interest,  indeed,  to  the  per 
son  in  whose  particular  case  it  is  to  be  illustrated, 
but  neither  new  nor  startling.  No  one  would 
think  of  citing  it,  whether  to  produce  conviction  or 
to  heighten  discourse.  Yet  mankind  are  agreed  in 
finding  something  more  poignant  in  the  same  re 
flection  when  Horace  tells  us  that  the  palace  as  well 
as  the  hovel  shudders  at  the  ^discriminating  foot 
of  Death.  Here  is  something  more  than  the  dry 
statement  of  a  truism.  The  difference  between  the 
two  is  that  between  a  lower  and  a  higher  ;  it  is, 
in  short,  the  difference  between  prose  and  poetry. 
The  oyster  has  begun,  at  least,  to  secrete  its  pearl, 
something  identical  with  its  shell  in  substance, 
but  in  sentiment  and  association  how  unlike  !  Mal- 
herbe  takes  the  same  image  and  makes  it  a  little 
more  picturesque,  though,  at  the  same  time,  I  fear, 
a  little  more  Parisian,  too,  when  he  says  that  the  sen 
tinel  pacing  before  the  gate  of  the  Louvre  cannot 
forbid  Death  an  entrance  to  the  King.  And  how 


42  GRAY 

long  had  not  that  comparison  between  the  rose's 
life  and  that  of  the  maiden  dying  untimely  been  a 
commonplace  when  the  same  Malherbe  made  it  ir- 
reclaimably  his  own  by  mere  felicity  of  phrase  ?  We 
do  not  ask  where  people  got  their  hints,  but  what 
they  made  out  of  them.  The  commonplace  is  un 
happily  within  reach  of  us  all,  and  unhappily,  too, 
they  are  rare  who  can  give  it  novelty  and  even 
invest  it  with  a  kind  of  grandeur  as  Gray  knew  how 
to  do.  If  his  poetry  be  a  mosaic,  the  design  is 
always  his  own.  He,  if  any,  had  certainly  "  the 
last  and  greatest  art,"  the  art  to  please.  Shall  we 
call  everything  mediocre  that  is  not  great  ?  Shall 
we  deny  ourselves  to  the  charm  of  sentiment  because 
we  prefer  the  electric  shudder  that  imagination 
gives  us  ?  Even  were  Gray's  claims  to  being  a 
great  poet  rejected,  he  can  never  be  classed  with 
the  many,  so  great  and  uniform  are  the  efficacy 
of  his  phrase  and  the  music  to  which  he  sets  it. 
This  unique  distinction,  at  least,  may  be  claimed  for 
him  without  dispute,  that  he  is  the  one  English  poet 
who  has  written  less  and  pleased  more  than  any 
other.  Above  all  it  is  as  a  teacher  of  the  art  of 
writing  that  he  is  to  be  valued.  If  there  be  any 
well  of  English  undefiled,  it  is  to  be  found  in  him 
and  his  master,  Dryden.  They  are  still  standards 
of  what  may  be  called  classical  English,  neither 
archaic  nor  modern,  and  as  far  removed  from 
pedantry  as  from  vulgarity.  They  were 

"  Tons  deux  disciples  d'une  escole 
Ou  Ton  forcene  doucement," 

a  school  in  which  have  been  enrolled  the  Great 
Masters  of  literature. 


SOME  LETTERS  OF  WALTER  SAVAGE 
LANDOR.1 

1888. 

I  WAS  first  directed  to  Landor's  works  by  hear 
ing  how  much  store  Emerson  set  by  them.  I  grew 
acquainted  with  them  fifty  years  ago  in  one  of  those 
arched  alcoves  in  the  old  college  library  in  Harvard 
Hall,  which  so  pleasantly  secluded  without  wholly 
isolating  the  student.  That  footsteps  should  pass 
across  the  mouth  of  his  Aladdin's  Cave,  or  even 
enter  it  in  search  of  treasure,  so  far  from  disturb 
ing  only  deepened  his  sense  of  possession.  These 
faint  rumors  of  the  world  he  had  left  served  but 
as  a  pleasant  reminder  that  he  was  the  privileged 
denizen  of  another,  beyond  "the  flaming  bounds 
of  place  and  time."  There,  with  my  book  lying  at 
ease  and  in  the  expansion  of  intimacy  on  the  broad 
window-shelf,  shifting  my  cell  from  north  to  south 
with  the  season,  I  made  friendships,  that  have 
lasted  me  for  life,  with  Dodsley's  "Old  Plays," 
with  Cotton's  "Montaigne,"  with  Hakluyt's  "Voy 
ages,"  among  others  that  were  not  in  my  father's 
library.  It  was  the  merest  browsing,  no  doubt,  as 
Johnson  called  it,  but  how  delightful  it  was !  All 

1  Written  to  introduce  Landor's  letters  to  the  readers  of  The 
Century  Magazine,  in  which  they  were  first  published. 


44  WALTER   SAVAGE  LANDOR 

the  more,  I  fear,  because  it  added  the  stolen  sweet 
ness  of  truancy  to  that  of  study,  for  I  should  have 
been  buckling  to  my  allotted  task  of  the  day.  I 
do  not  regret  that  diversion  of  time  to  other  than 
legitimate  expenses,  yet  shall  I  not  gravely  warn 
my  grandsons  to  beware  of  doing  the  like  ? 

I  was  far  from  understanding  all  I  heard  in  this 
society  of  my  elders  into  which  I  had  smuggled  my 
self,  and  perhaps  it  was  as  well  for  me ;  but  those 
who  formed  it  condescended  to  me  at  odd  moments 
with  the  tolerant  complacency  of  greatness,  and 
I  did  not  go  empty  away.  Landor  was  in  many 
ways  beyond  me,  but  I  loved  the  company  he 
brought,  making  persons  for  me  of  what  before  had 
been  futile  names,  and  letting  me  hear  the  discourse 
of  men  about  whom  Plutarch  had  so  often  told  me 
such  delightful  stories.  He  charmed  me,  some 
times  perhaps  he  imposed  on  me,  with  the  stately 
eloquence  that  moved  to  measure  always,  often  to 
music,  and  never  enfeebled  itself  by  undue  empha 
sis,  or  raised  its  tone  above  the  level  of  good  breed 
ing.  In  those  ebullient  years  of  my  adolescence 
it  was  a  wholesome  sedative.  His  sententiousness, 
too,  had  its  charm,  equally  persuasive  in  the  care 
fully  draped  folds  of  the  chlamys  or  the  succinct 
tunic  of  epigram.  If  Plato  had  written  in  English, 
I  thought,  it  is  thus  that  he  would  have  written. 
Here  was  a  man,  who  knew  what  literature  was, 
who  had  assimilated  what  was  best  in  it,  and  him 
self  produced  or  reproduced  it. 

Three  years  later,  while  I  was  trying  to  persuade 


WALTER   SAVAGE  LANDOR  45 

myself  that  I  was  reading  law,  a  friend l  who  knew 
better  gave  me  the  first  series  of  the  "Imaginary 
Conversations,"  in  three  volumes,  to  which  I  pres 
ently  added  the  second  series,  and  by  degrees  all 
Landor's  other  books  as  I  could  pick  them  up,  or 
as  they  were  successively  published.  Thus  I  grew 
intimate  with  him,  and,  as  my  own  judgment  grad 
ually  affirmed  itself,  was  driven  to  some  abatement 
of  my  hitherto  unqualified  admiration.  I  began 
to  be  not  quite  sure  whether  the  balance  of  his 
sentences,  each  so  admirable  by  itself,  did  not  grow 
wearisome  in  continuous  reading,  —  whether  it  did 
not  hamper  his  freedom  of  movement,  as  when  a 
man  poises  a  pole  upon  his  chin.  Surely  he  has 
not  the  swinging  stride  of  Dry  den,  which  could 
slacken  to  a  lounge  at  will,  nor  the  impassioned 
rush  of  Burke.  Here  was  something  of  that  ca- 
denced  stalk  which  is  the  attribute  of  theatrical 
kings.  And  sometimes  did  not  his  thunders  also 
remind  us  of  the  property-room?  Though  the 

1  Let  me  please  myself  by  laying1  a  sprig  of  rosemary  ('*  that 's 
for  remembrance  ")  on  his  grave.  This  friend  was  John  Francis 
Heath,  of  Virginia,  who  took  his  degree  in  1840.  He  was  the 
handsomest  man  I  have  ever  seen,  and  in  every  manly  exercise 
the  most  accomplished.  His  body  was  as  exquisitely  moulded  as 
his  face  was  beautiful.  I  seem  to  see  him  now  taking  that  famous 
standing-jump  of  his,  the  brown  curls  blowing  backward,  or  lay 
ing  his  hand  on  his  horse's  neck  and  vaulting  into  the  saddle. 
After  leaving  college  he  went  to  Germany  and  dreamed  away  nine 
years  at  Heidelberg.  We  used  to  call  him  Hamlet,  he  could  have 
done  so  much  and  did  so  absolutely  nothing.  He  died  in  the  Con 
federate  service,  in  1862.  He  was  a  good  swordsman  (we  used  to 
fence  in  those  days),  and  the  rumor  of  his  German  duels  and  of 
his  intimacy  with  Prussian  princes  reached  us  when  some  fellow- 
student  came  home. 


46  WALTER  SAVAGE  LAN  DOR 

flash  failed,  did  the  long  reverberation  ever  forget 
to  follow?  But  there  is  always  something  over- 
passionate  in  the  recoil  of  the  young  man  from 
the  idols  of  the  boy.  Even  now  when  I  am  more 
temperate,  however,  I  cannot  help  feeling  that  his 
humor  is  horse-play;  that  he  is  often  trivial  and 
not  seldom  slow;  that  he  now  and  again  misses  the 
true  mean  that  can  be  grave  without  heaviness  and 
light  without  levity,  though  he  would  have  dilated 
on  that  virtue  of  our  composite  tongue  which  ena 
bled  it  to  make  the  distinction,  and  would  have  be 
lieved  himself  the  first  to  discover  it.  He  cannot 
be  familiar  unless  at  the  cost  of  his  own  dignity  and 
our  respect.  I  sometimes  question  whether  even 
that  quality  in  him  which  we  cannot  but  recognize 
and  admire,  his  loftiness  of  mind,  should  not  some 
times  rather  be  called  uppishness,  so  often  is  the 
one  caricatured  into  the  other  by  a  blusterous  self- 
confidence  and  self-assertion. 
He  says  of  himself,  — 

"  Nature  I  loved,  and,  next  to  Nature,  Art ;  " 

but  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  it  was  Art  he  loved 
most.  His  perennial  and  abiding  happiness  was 
in  composition,  in  fitting  word  to  word,  and  these 
into  periods,  like  a  master- workman  in  mosaic. 
This,  perhaps,  is  why  he  preferred  writing  Latin 
verse,  because  in  doing  that  the  joy  of  composing 
was  a  more  conscious  joy.  Certainly  we  miss  in 
him  that  quality  of  spontaneousness,  that  element 
of  luck,  which  so  delights  us  in  some  of  the  lesser 
and  all  the  greater  poets.  By  his  own  account 


WALTER   SAVAGE  LAN  DOR  47 

the  most  audacious  of  men,  his  thought  and  phrase 
have  seldom  the  happy  audacity  of  what  Montaigne 
calls  the  first  jump.  Father  Thames  could  never 
have  come  upon  his  stage  with  both  his  banks  on 
the  same  side,  refreshing  as  that  innovation  might 
have  been  to  an  audience  familiar  with  the  hum 
drum  habits  of  the  river.  Yet  he  is  often  content 
to  think  himself  original  when  he  has  lashed  him 
self  into  extravagance;  and  the  reserve  of  his  bet 
ter  style  is  the  more  remarkable  that  he  made 
spoiled  children  of  all  his  defects  of  character.  It 
might  almost  seem  that  he  sought  and  found  an 
equipoise  for  his  hasty  violence  of  conduct  in  the 
artistic  equanimity  of  his  literary  manner.  I  think 
he  had  little  dramatic  faculty.  The  creations  of 
his  brain  do  not  detach  themselves  from  it  and 
become  objective.  He  lived  almost  wholly  in  his 
own  mind  and  in  a  world  of  his  own  making  which 
his  imagination  peopled  with  casts  after  the  antique. 
His  "Conversations"  were  imaginary  in  a  truer 
sense  than  he  intended,  for  it  is  images  rather  than 
persons  that  converse  with  each  other  in  them. 
Pericles  and  Phocion  speak  as  we  might  fancy  their 
statues  to  speak,  —  nobly  indeed,  but  with  the  cold 
nobleness  of  marble.  He  had  fire  enough  in  him 
self,  but  his  pen  seems  to  have  been  a  non-conduc 
tor  between  it  and  his  personages.  So  little  coidd 
he  conceive  the  real  world  as  something  outside 
him,  that  nobody  but  himself  was  astonished  when 
he  was  cast  in  damages  at  the  suit  of  a  lady  to 
whom  he  had  addressed  verses  that  would  have 
blackened  Cauidia.  But  he  had  done  it  merely  as 


48  WALTER   SAVAGE  LANDOR 

an  exercise  in  verse ;  it  was  of  that  he  was  think 
ing,  more  than  of  her,  and  I  doubt  if  she  was  so 
near  his  consciousness,  or  so  actual  to  him,  as  the 
vile  creatures  of  ancient  Rome  whose  vices  and 
crimes  he  laid  at  her  door.  Even  his  in  every 
way  admirable  apothegms  seem  to  be  made  out  of 
the  substance  of  his  mind,  and  not  of  his  experience 
or  observation.  And  yet,  with  all  his  remoteness, 
I  can  think  of  no  author  who  has  oftener  brimmed 
my  eyes  with  tears  of  admiration  or  sympathy. 

When  we  have  made  all  deductions,  he  remains 
great  and,  above  all,  individual.  There  is  nothing 
in  him  at  second-hand.  The  least  wise  of  men,  he 
has  uttered  through  the  mask  of  his  interlocutors 
(if  I  cannot  trust  myself  to  call  them  characters) 
more  wisdom  on  such  topics  of  life  and  thought  as 
interested  or  occurred  to  him  than  is  to  be  found 
outside  of  Shakespeare;  and  that  in  an  English 
so  pure,  so  harmonious,  and  so  stirringly  sonorous 
that  he  might  almost  seem  to  have  added  new  stops 
to  the  organ  which  Milton  found  sufficient  for  his 
needs.  Though  not  a  critic  in  the  larger  sense,  — 
he  was  too  rash  for  that,  too  much  at  the  mercy  of 
his  own  talent  for  epigram  and  seemingly  conclusive 
statement,  —  no  man  has  said  better  things  about 
books  than  he.  So  well  said  are  they,  indeed,  that 
it  seems  ungrateful  to  ask  if  they  are  always  just. 
One  would  scruple  to  call  him  a  great  thinker,  yet 
surely  he  was  a  man  who  had  great  thoughts,  and 
when  he  was  in  the  right  mood  these  seam  the  am 
ple  heaven  of  his  discourse  like  meteoric  showers. 
He  was  hardly  a  great  poet,  yet  he  has  written 


WALTER  SAVAGE  LAN  DOR  49 

some  of  the  most  simply  and  conclusively  perfect 
lines  that  our  own  or  any  other  language  can  show. 
They  float  stately  as  swans  on  the  tamer  level  of 
his  ordinary  verse.  Some  of  his  shorter  poems  are 
perfect  as  crystals.  His  metaphors  are  nobly  ori 
ginal  ;  they  stand  out  in  their  bare  grandeur  like 
statues  against  a  background  of  sky;  his  similes 
are  fresh,  and  from  nature;  he  plucks  them  as  he 
goes,  like  wild-flowers,  nor  interrupts  his  talk. 
An  intellectual  likeness  between  him  and  Ben  Jon- 
son  constantly  suggests  itself  to  me.  Both  had 
burly  minds  with  much  apparent  coarseness  of  fibre, 
yet  with  singular  delicacy  of  temperament. 

In  politics  he  was  generally  extravagant,  yet  so 
long  ago  as  1812  he  was  wise  enough  (in  a  letter  to 
Southey)  to  call  war  between  England  and  America 
civil  war,  though  he  would  not  have  been  himself  if 
he  had  not  added,  "I  detest  the  Americans  as  much 
as  you  do."  In  1826  he  proposed  a  plan  that 
woidd  have  pacified  Ireland  and  saved  England 
sixty  years  of  odious  mistake. 

Ten  or  twelve  years  ago  I  tried  to  condense  my 
judgment  of  him  into  a  pair  of  quatrains,  written 
in  a  copy  of  his  works  given  to  a  dear  young  friend 
on  her  marriage.  As  they  were  written  in  a  hap 
pier  mood  than  is  habitual  with  me  now,  I  may  be 
pardoned  for  citing  them  here  with  her  permission, 
and  through  her  kindness  in  sending  me  a  copy :  — 

"  A  villa  fair,  with  many  a  devious  \valk 
Darkened  with  deathless  laurels  from  the  sun, 
Ample  for  troops  of  friends  in  mutual  talk, 
Green  Chartreuse  for  the  reverie  of  one  : 
Fixed  here  in  marble,  Rome  and  Athens  gleam  ; 


50  WALTER   SAVAGE  LANDOR 

Here  is  Arcadia,  here  Elysium  too ; 

Anon  an  English  voice  disturbs  our  dream, 

And  Landor's  self  can  Landor's  spell  undo." 

His  books,  as  I  seem  to  have  hinted  here,  are 
especially  good  for  reading  aloud  in  fitly  sifted 
company,  and  I  am  sure  that  so  often  as  the  experi 
ment  is  tried  this  company  will  say,  with  Fran- 
cesca :  — 

"  Per  piu  fiate  gli  occhi  ci  sospinse 
Quella  lettura,  e  scolorocci  il  viso." 

Landor  was  fond  of  saying  that  he  should  sup  late, 
but  that  the  hall  would  be  well  lighted,  and  the 
company,  if  few,  of  the  choicest.  The  table,  in 
deed,  has  been  long  spread,  but  will  he  sit  down  till 
the  number  of  the  guests  is  in  nearer  proportion  to 
that  of  the  covers?  It  is  now  forty  years  since  the 
collected  edition  of  his  works  was  published,  prob 
ably,  as  was  usual  in  his  case,  a  small  one.  Only 
one  re-impression  has  yet  been  called  for.  Mr. 
Forster's  biography  of  him  is  a  long  plea  for  a  new 
trial.  It  is  a  strange  fate  for  a  man  who  has  writ 
ten  so  much  to  interest,  to  instruct,  to  delight,  and 
to  inspire  his  fellow-men.  Perhaps  it  is  useless  to 
seek  any  other  solution  of  the  riddle  than  the  old 
habent  sua  fata  libelli.  But  I  envy  the  man  who 
has  before  him  the  reading  of  those  books  for  the 
first  time.  He  will  have  a  sensation  as  profound 
as  that  of  the  peasant  who  wandered  in  to  where 
Kaiser  Rothbart  sits  stately  with  his  knights  in  the 
mountain  cavern  biding  his  appointed  time. 

I  saw  Landor  but  once  —  when  I  went  down  from 
London,  by  his  invitation,  to  spend  a  day  with  him 


WALTER  SAVAGE  LANDOR  51 

at  Bath  in  the  late  summer  of  1852.  His  friend, 
the  late  Mr.  Ken  yon,  went  with  nie,  —  his  friend 
and  that  of  whoever  deserved  or  needed  friendship, 
the  divinely  appointed  amicus  curice  of  mankind  in 
general.  For  me  it  was  and  is  a  memorable  day, 
for  Landor  was  to  me  an  ancient,  and  it  seemed 
a  meeting  in  .Elysium.  I  had  looked  forward  to 
it,  nevertheless,  with  a  twinge  of  doubt,  for  three 
years  before  I  had  written  a  review  of  the  new 
edition  of  his  works,  in  which  I  had  discriminated 
more  than  had  been  altogether  pleasing  to  him. 
But  a  guest  was  as  sacred  to  Landor  as  to  an  Arab, 
and  the  unaffected  heartiness  of  his  greeting  at 
once  reassured  me.  I  have  little  to  tell  of  our  few 
hours'  converse,  for  the  stream  of  memory,  when 
it  has  been  flowing  so  long  as  mine,  gathers  an 
ooze  in  its  bed  like  that  of  Lethe,  and  in  this  the 
weightier  things  embed  themselves  past  recovery, 
while  the  lighter,  lying  nearer  the  surface,  may  be 
fished  up  again.  What  I  can  recollect,  therefore, 
illustrates  rather  the  manner  of  the  man  than  his 
matter.  His  personal  appearance  has  been  suffi 
ciently  described  by  others.  I  will  only  add,  that 
the  suffused  and  uniform  ruddiness  of  his  face,  in 
which  the  forehead,  already  heightened  by  baldness, 
shared,  and  something  in  the  bearing  of  his  head, 
reminded  me  vividly  of  the  late  President  Quincy, 
as  did  also  a  certain  hearty  resonance  of  speech. 
You  felt  yourself  in  the  presence  of  one  who  was 
emphatically  a  Man,  not  the  image  of  a  man;  so 
emphatically,  indeed,  that  even  Carlyle  thought 
the  journey  to  Bath  not  too  dear  a  price  to  pay  for 


52  WALTER   SAVAGE  LAN  DOR 

seeing  him,  and  found  something  royal  in  him. 
When  I  saw  him  he  was  in  his  seventy-eighth  year, 
but  erect  and  vigorous  as  in  middle  life.  There 
was  something  of  challenge  even  in  the  alertness  of 
his  pose,  and  the  head  was  often  thrown  back  like 
that  of  a  boxer  who  awaits  a  blow.  He  had  the 
air  of  the  arena.  I  do  not  remember  that  his  head 
was  large,  or  his  eyes  in  any  way  remarkable. 

After  the  first  greetings  were  over,  I  thought 
it  might  please  him  to  know  that  I  had  made  a 
pilgrimage  to  his  Fiesolan  villa.  I  spoke  of  the 
beauty  of  its  site.  I  could  not  have  been  more 
clumsy,  had  I  tried.  "Yes,"  he  almost  screamed, 
"  and  I  might  have  been  there  now,  but  for  that  in- 
tol-e-rrr-a-ble  woman!  "  pausing  on  each  syllable 
of  the  adjective  as  one  who  would  leave  an  impre 
cation  there,  and  making  the  r  grate  as  if  it  were 
grinding  its  teeth  at  the  disabilities  which  distance 
imposes  on  resentment.  I  was  a  little  embarrassed 
by  this  sudden  confidence,  which  I  should  not  here 
betray  had  not  Mr.  Forster  already  laid  Landor's 
domestic  relations  sufficiently  bare.  I  am  not  sure 
whether  he  told  me  the  story  of  his  throwing  his 
cook  out  of  a  window  of  this  villa.  I  think  he 
did,  but  it  may  have  been  Mr.  Kenyon  who  told  it 
me  on  the  way  back  to  London.  The  legend  was, 
that  after  he  had  performed  this  summary  act  of 
justice,  Mrs.  Landor  remonstrated  with  a  "There, 
Walter !  I  always  told  you  that  one  day  you  would 
do  something  to  be  sorry  for  in  these  furies  of 
yours."  Few  men  can  be  serene  under  an  "I  al 
ways  told  you  so  "  —  least  of  all  men  could  Landor. 


WALTER  SAVAGE  LAN  DOR  53 

But  he  saw  that  here  was  an  occasion  where  calm 
is  more  effective  than  tempest,  and  where  a  soft 
answer  is  more  provoking  than  a  hard.  So  he  re 
plied  mildly:  "Well,  my  dear,  I  am  sorry,  if  that 
will  do  you  any  good.  If  I  had  remembered  that 
our  best  tulip-bed  was  under  that  window,  I  'd  have 
flung  the  dog  out  of  t'  other." 

He  spoke  with  his  wonted  extravagance  (he  was 
always  in  extremes)  of  Prince  Louis  Napoleon:  "I 
have  seen  all  the  great  men  that  have  appeared  in 
Europe  during  the  last  half-century,  and  he  is  the 
ablest  of  them  all.  Had  his  uncle  had  but  a  tithe 
of  his  ability,  he  would  never  have  died  at  St. 
Helena.  The  last  time  I  saw  the  Prince  before  he 
went  over  to  France,  he  said  to  me,  'Good-bye, 
Mr.  Landor;  I  go  to  a  dungeon  or  a  throne.' 
'Good-bye,  Prince,'  I  answered.  'If  you  go  to  a 
dungeon,  you  may  see  me  again ;  if  to  a  throne, 
never ! '  He  told  me  a  long  story  of  some  Merino 
sheep  that  had  been  sent  him  from  Spain,  and 
which  George  III.  had  "stolen."  He  seemed  to 
imply  that  this  was  a  greater  crime  than  throwing 
away  the  American  colonies,  and  a  perfidy  of  which 
only  kings  coidd  be  capable.  I  confess  that  I 
thought  the  sheep  as  shadowy  as  those  of  Hans  in 
Luck,  for  I  was  not  long  in  discovering  that  Lan 
dor 's  memory  had  a  great  deal  of  imagination 
mixed  with  it,  especially  when  the  subject  was 
anything  that  related  to  himself.  It  was  not  a 
memory,  however,  that  was  malignly  treacherous 
to  others. 

I  mentioned  his  brother  Robert's  "Fountain  of 


54  WALTER  SAVAGE  LANDOR 

Arethusa;"  told  Mm  how  much  it  had  interested 
me,  and  how  particularly  I  had  been  struck  with 
the  family  likeness  to  himself  in  it.  He  assented; 
said  it  was  family  likeness,  not  imitation,  and 
added:  "Yes,  when  it  came  out  many  people,  even 
some  of  my  friends,  thought  it  was  mine,  and  told 
me  so.  My  answer  always  was,  'I  wish  to  God  I 
could  have  written  it !  '  He  spoke  of  it  with  un 
feigned  enthusiasm,  though  then,  1  believe,  he  was 
not  on  speaking  terms  with  his  brother.  When 
ever,  indeed,  his  talk  turned,  as  it  often  would,  to 
the  books  or  men  he  liked,  it  rose  to  a  passionate 
appreciation  of  them.  Even  upon  indifferent  mat 
ters  he  commonly  spoke  with  heat,  as  if  he  had 
been  contradicted,  or  hoped  he  might  be.  There 
was  no  prophesying  his  weather  by  reading  the 
barometer  of  his  face.  Though  the  index  might 
point  never  so  steadily  to  Fair,  the  storm  might 
burst  at  any  moment.  His  quiet  was  that  of  the 
cyclone's  pivot,  a  conspiracy  of  whirlwind.  Of 
Wordsworth  he  spoke  with  a  certain  alienated  re 
spect,  and  made  many  abatements,  not  as  if  jeal 
ous,  but  somewhat  in  the  mood  of  that  Athenian 
who  helped  ostracize  Aristides.  Of  what  he  said  I 
recollect  only  something  which  he  has  since  said 
in  print,  but  with  less  point.  Its  felicity  stamped 
it  on  my  memory.  "I  once  said  to  Mr.  Words 
worth,  '  One  may  mix  as  much  poetry  with  prose 
as  one  likes,  it  will  exhilarate  the  whole;  but  the 
moment  one  mixes  a  drop  of  prose  with  poetry,  it 
precipitates  the  whole.'  He  never  forgave  me!" 
Then  followed  that  ringing  and  reduplicated  laugh 
of  his,  so  like  the  joyous  bark  of  a  dog  when  he 


WALTER  SAVAGE  LANDOR  55 

starts  for  a  ramble  with  his  master.  Of  course  he 
did  not  fail  to  mention  that  exquisite  sea-shell 
which  Wordsworth  had  conveyed  from  Gebir  to 
ornament  his  own  mantelpiece. 

After  lunch,  he  led  us  into  a  room  the  whole 
available  wall-space  of  which  was  hung  with  pic 
tures,  nearly  all  early  Italian.  As  I  was  already 
a  lover  of  Botticelli,  I  think  I  may  trust  the  judg 
ment  I  then  inwardly  pronounced  upon  them,  that 
they  were  nearly  all  aggressively  bad.  They  were 
small,  so  that  the  offence  of  each  was  trifling,  but 
in  the  aggregate  they  were  hard  to  bear.  I  waited 
doggedly  to  hear  him  begin  his  celebration  of  them, 
dumfounded  between  my  moral  obligation  to  be  as 
truthful  as  I  dishonestly  could  and  my  social  duty 
not  to  give  offence  to  my  host.  However,  I  was 
soon  partially  relieved.  The  picture  he  wished 
to  show  was  the  head  of  a  man,  an  ancestor,  he  told 
me,  whose  style  of  hair  and  falling  collar  were  of 
the  second  quarter  of  the  seventeenth  century. 
Turning  sharply  on  me,  he  asked:  "Does  it  re 
mind  you  of  anybody?  "  Of  course  this  was  a  sim 
ple  riddle ;  so,  after  a  diplomatic  pause  of  deliber 
ation,  I  replied,  cheerfully  enough  :  "I  think  I  see 
a  likeness  to  you  in  it."  There  was  an  appreciable 
amount  of  fib  in  this,  but  I  trust  it  may  be  par 
doned  me  as  under  duress.  "  Right!  "  he  exploded, 
with  the  condensed  emphasis  of  a  rifle.  "  Does  it 
remind  you  of  anybody  else?"  For  an  instant  I 
thought  my  retribution  had  overtaken  me,  but  in  a 
flash  of  inspiration  I  asked  myself,  "Whom  would 
Landor  like  best  to  resemble?"  The  answer  was 
easy,  and  I  gave  it  forthwith :  "I  think  I  see  a 


56  WALTER  SAVAGE  LANDOR 

likeness  to  Milton."  "Right  again!"  he  cried 
triumphantly.  "It  does  look  like  me,  and  it  does 
look  like  Milton.  That  is  the  portrait  of  my  an 
cestor,  Walter  Noble,  Speaker  of  one  of  Charles 
First's  parliaments.  I  was  showing  this  portrait 
one  day  to  a  friend,  when  he  said  to  me,  'Landor, 
how  can  you  pride  yourself  on  your  descent  from 
this  sturdy  old  cavalier  —  you  who  would  have  cut 
off  Charles's  head  with  the  worst  of  'em?  '  4/cut 
off  his  head?  Never!  '  'You  wouldn't?  I'm 
astonished  to  hear  you  say  that.  What  would  you 
have  done  with  him?  '  'What  would  I  have  done? 
Why,  hanged  him,  like  any  other  malefactor !  ' 
This  he  trumpeted  with  such  a  blare  of  victory  as 
almost  made  his  progenitor  rattle  on  the  wall  where 
he  hung.  Whether  the  portrait  was  that  of  an 
ancestor,  or  whether  he  had  bought  it  as  one  suit 
able  for  his  story,  I  cannot  say.  If  an  ancestor,  it 
could  only  have  been  Michael  (not  Walter)  Noble, 
Member  of  Parliament  (not  Speaker)  during  the 
Civil  War,  and  siding  with  the  Commons  against 
the  King.  Landor  had  confounded  him  with  Sir 
Arnold  Savage  (a  Speaker  in  Henry  Seventh's 
time),  whom  he  had  adopted  as  an  ancestor,  though 
there  was  no  probable,  certainly  no  provable,  com 
munity  of  blood  between  them.  This  makes  the 
anecdote  only  the  more  characteristic  as  an  illus 
tration  of  the  freaks  of  his  innocently  fantastic  and 
creative  memory.  I  could  almost  wish  my  own  had 
the  same  happy  faculty,  when  I  see  how  little  it 
has  preserved  of  my  conversation,  so  largely  mon 
ologue  on  his  part,  with  a  man  so  memorable. 


WALTON.^ 

1889. 

BIOGRAPHY  in  these  communicative  days  has  be 
come  so  voluminous  that  it  migiit  seem  calculated 
rather  for  the  ninefold  vitality  of  another  domestic 
animal  than  for  the  less  lavish  allotment  of  man. 
Only  such  renewed  leases  of  life  could  justify  the 
writing  or  suffice  for  the  reading  of  these  too  often 
supererogatory  confidences.  Only  a  man  like  the 
great  Julius,  who  new-moulded  the  world  and 
stamped  his  effigy  on  the  coinage  of  political 
thought  still  current,  has  a  right  to  so  much  of  our 
curiosity  as  we  are  now  expected  to  put  at  the  ser 
vice  of  an  average  general  or  bishop.  "Nothing 
human  is  foreign  to  me  "  was  said  long  ago,  chiefly 
by  the  Latin  Grammar,  and  has  been  received  as 
the  pit  and  gallery  receive  a  moral  sentiment  which 
does  not  inconvenience  themselves,  but  which  they 
think  likely  to  give  the  boxes  an  uneasy  qualm. 
But  biography  has  found  out  a  process  by  which 
what  is  human  may  be  so  thrust  upon  us  as  to  become 
inhuman,  and  one  is  often  tempted  to  wish  that  a 
great  deal  of  it  might  not  only  be  made  foreign  to 

1  This  paper  was  originally  printed  as  an  introduction  to  an  edi 
tion  of  Walton's  Angler,  edited  by  Mr.  John  Bartlett,  and  pub 
lished  in  1S89  by  Messrs.  Little,  Brown  &  Co.,  through  whose  cour 
tesy  it  is  included  in  this  collection. 


58  WALTON 

us,  but  firmly  kept  so.  Plutarch,  a  man  of  the 
most  many-sided  moral  and  intellectual  interests, 
had  a  truer  sense  of  proportion,  and  tempers  his 
amiable  discursiveness  with  an  eye  to  his  neigh 
bor's  dial.  And  in  his  case  the  very  names  of 
his  heroes  are  mostly  so  trumpet-like  as  both  to 
waken  attention  and  to  warrant  it,  ushering  in  the 
bearers  of  them  like  that  flourish  on  the  Eliza 
bethan  stage  which  told  that  a  king  was  coming. 
How  should  Brown  or  Smith  or  any  other  dingy 
monosyllable  of  Saxon  indistinction  compete  for 
conjuration  with  Pelopidas  or  Timoleon?  Even 
within  living  memory  Napoleon  had  a  prodigious 
purchase  in  his  name  alone,  and  prettily  confirmed 
the  theory  of  Mr.  Shandy. 

The  modern  biographer  has  become  so  indiscrim 
inate,  so  unconscious  of  the  relative  importance  of 
a  single  life  to  the  Universe,  so  careless  of  the  just 
limits  whether  of  human  interest  or  endurance,  so 
communistic  in  assuming  that  all  men  are  entitled 
to  an  equal  share  of  what  little  time  there  is  left 
in  the  world,  that  many  a  worthy,  whom  a  para 
graph  from  the  right  pen  might  have  immmortal- 
ized,  is  suffocated  in  the  trackless  swamps  of  two 
octavos.  Meditating  over  these  grievances  with 
the  near  prospect  of  a  biography  to  write,  I  am 
inclined  to  apply  what  was  said  of  States  to  men 
also,  and  call  him  happiest  who  has  left  fewest  ma 
terials  for  history.  It  is  at  least  doubtful  whether 
gossip  gain  body  by  bottling.  In  these  chattering 
days  when  nobody  who  really  is  nobody  can  stir 
forth  without  the  volunteer  accompaniment  of  a 


WALTON  59 

brass  band,  when  there  is  a  certificated  eye  at  every 
keyhole,  and  when  the  Public  Informer  has  become 
so  essential  a  minister  to  the  general  comfort  that 
the  world  cannot  go  about  its  business  of  a  morning 
till  its  intellectual  appetite  is  appeased  with  the 
latest  doings  and  sayings  of  John  Doe  and  Richard 
Roe,  there  is  healing  in  the  gentlemanlike  reserves 
of  the  past,  a  benign  sense  of  seclusion,  a  comfort 
such  as  loved  hands  bring  to  fevered  brows,  in  the 
thought  of  one  who,  like  Walton,  has  been  safe 
for  two  hundred  years  in  the  impregnable  strong 
hold  of  the  grave.  Malice  domestic,  treason,  in 
terviews,  nothing  can  touch  him  further.  The 
sanctities  of  his  life,  at  least,  cannot  be  hawked 
about  the  streets  or  capitalized  in  posters  as  a  whet 
to  the  latest  edition  of  the  Peeping  Tom.  If  it  be 
the  triumph  of  an  historian  to  make  the  great  high 
ways  of  the  olden  time  populous  and  noisy,  or  even 
vulgar,  with  their  old  life  again,  it  is  nevertheless 
a  consolation  that  we  may  still  find  by-paths  there, 
dumb  as  those  through  a  pine  forest,  sacred  to 
meditation  and  to  grateful  thoughts. 

Such  a  by-path  is  the  life  of  Walton.  Though 
it  lead  us  through  nearly  a  hundred  years  of  his 
tory,  many  of  them  stormy  with  civil  or  anxious 
with  foreign  war,  the  clamor  of  events  is  seldom 
importunate,  and  the  petulant  driuns  are  muffled 
with  a  dreamy  remoteness.  So  far  as  he  himself 
could  shape  its  course,  it  leads  us  under  the  shadow 
of  honeysuckle  hedges,  or  along  the  rushy  banks  of 
silence-loving  streams,  or  through  the  claustral  hush 
of  cathedral  closes,  or  where  the  shadow  of  the  vil- 


60  WALTON 

lage  church -tower  creeps  round  its  dial  of  green 
graves  below,  or  to  the  company  of  thoughtful  and 
godly  men.  He  realized  the  maxim  which  Voltaire 
preached,  but  so  assiduously  avoided  practising,  — 
bene  vixit  qui  bene  latuit.  He  did  his  best  to  fulfil 
the  apostle's  injunction  in  ( studying  to  be  quiet. 
Whether  such  fugitive  and  cloistered  virtue  as  his 
come  within  the  sweep  of  Milton's  gravely  cadenced 
lash  or  not,  whether  a  man  do  not  owe  himself  more 
to  the  distasteful  publicity  of  active  citizenship  than 
to  the  petting  of  his  own  private  tastes  or  talents, 
as  Walton  thought  it  right  and  found  it  sweet  to 
do,  may  be  a  question.  There  can  be  none  that 
the  contemplation  of  such  a  life  both  soothes  and 
charms,  and  we  sigh  to  think  that  the  like  of  it  is 
possible  no  longer.  Where  now  would  the  fugitive 
from  the  espials  of  our  modern  life  find  a  sanctuary 
which  telegraph  or  telephone  had  not  deflowered? 
I  do  not  mean  that  Walton  was  an  idle  man,  who, 
as  time  was  given  him  for  nothing,  thought  that  he 
might  part  with  it  for  nothing  too.  If  he  had 
been,  I  should  not  be  writing  this.  He  left  behind 
him  two  books,  each  a  masterpiece  in  its  own  sim 
ple  and  sincere  way,  and  only  the  contemplative 
leisure  of  a  life  like  his  could  have  secreted  the  pre 
cious  qualities  that  assure  them  against  decay. 

But  Walton's  life  touches  the  imagination  at 
more  points  than  this  of  its  quietude  and  inwardness. 
It  opens  many  windows  to  the  fancy.  Its  opportu 
nities  were  as  remarkable  as  its  length.  Twenty- 
two  years  old  when  Shakespeare  died,  he  lived  long 
enough  to  have  read  Dryden's  "Absalom  and 


WALTON  61 

Achitophel."  He  had  known  Ben  Jonson  and 
Chillingworth  and  Draytou  and  Fuller;  lie  had 
exchanged  gossip  with  Antony  a  Wood;  he  was 
the  friend  of  Donne  and  Wotton  and  King;  he 
had  seen  George  Herbert;  and  how  many  more 
sons  of  Memory  must  he  not  have  known  or  seen 
in  all  those  years  so  populous  with  men  justly 
famous !  Of  the  outward  husk  of  this  life  of  his  we 
know  comfortably  little,  but  of  the  kernel  much, 
and  that  chiefly  from  such  unconscious  glimpses  as 
he  himself  has  given  us. 

Isaac,  or  (as  he  preferred  to  spell  the  name) 
Izaak,  Walton  was  born  at  Stafford,  on  the  9th  of 
August,  1593,  of  a  family  in  the  rank  of  substan 
tial  yeomen  long  established  in  Staffordshire.  Of 
his  mother  not  even  the  name  is  known,  and  of  his 
father  we  know  only  that  his  baptismal  name  was 
Jervis,  and  that  he  was  buried  on  the  llth  of  Feb 
ruary,  1596-97.  Surely  the  short  and  simple 
annals  of  the  poor  have  been  seldom  more  laconic 
than  this.  Sir  Harris  Xicolas,  author  of  the  first 
trustworthy  Life  of  Walton,  yielding  for  once  to 
the  biographer's  weakness  for  appearances,  says 
that  he  "received  a  good,  though  not,  strictly 
speaking,  classical  education."  Considering  that 
absolutely  nothing  is  known  of  Walton's  schooling, 
the  concession  to  historical  conscientiousness  made 
in  the  parenthetic  "strictly  speaking"  is  amusing. 
We  have  the  witness  of  documents  in  Walton's 
own  handwriting  that  he  could  never  have  been 
taught  even  the  rudiments  of  Latin ;  for  he  spells 
the  third  person  singular  of  the  perfect  tense  of 


62  WALTON 

obire,  obiet,  separate,  seperate,  and  divided,  de- 
vided.  And  these  documents  are  printed  by  Sir 
Harris  himself.  After  this  one  finds  it  hard  to  con 
ceive  what  a  classical  education,  loosely  speaking, 
would  be.  In  the  list  of  Walton's  books  there  is 
none  that  is  not  in  English.  It  is  enough  for  us 
that  he  contrived  to  pick  up  somewhere  and  some 
how  a  competent  mastery  of  his  mother-tongue 
(far  harder  because  seeming  easier  than  Latin), 
and  a  diction  of  persuasive  simplicity,  capable  of 
dignity  where  that  was  natural  and  becoming,  such 
as  not  even  the  universities  can  bestow. 

It  is  not  known  in  what  year  he  went  to  London. 
It  has  been  conjectured,  and  with  much  probability, 
that  he  was  sent  thither  to  serve  his  apprenticeship 
with  a  relative,  Henry  Walton,  a  haberdasher. 
Of  this  Henry  Walton  nothing  is  known  beyond 
what  we  are  told  by  his  will,  and  this  shows  us  that 
he  had  connections  with  Staffordshire.  That  Izaak 
Walton  gave  the  name  of  Henry  to  two  sons  in 
succession  seems  to  show  some  kind  of  close  relation 
between  them  and  some  earlier  Henry.  But  Mr. 
Nicholls  discovered  in  the  records  of  the  Ironmon 
gers'  Company  for  1617-18  the  following  entry: 
"Isaac  Walton  was  made  one  of  the  Ironmongers' 
Company  by  Thomas  Grinsell,  citizen  and  iron 
monger."  That  Walton  had  relatives  of  this  name 
appears  from  a  legacy  in  his  will  to  the  widow  of 
his  "Cosen  Grinsell."  On  the  whole,  whatever 
light  is  let  in  by  this  chink  serves  only  to  make  the 
abundant  darkness  more  visible.  May  there  not 
have  been  another  Isaac,  perhaps  a  cousin,  to  dis- 


WALTON  63 

tinguish  himself  from  whom  ours  gave  to  his  sur 
name  its  fantastic  spelling?  What  is  certain  is 
that  he  was  already  in  London  in  1619.  In  that 
year  was  published  the  second  edition  of  a  poem, 
"The  Love  of  Amos  and  Laura,"  which,  to  judge 
by  all  that  I  know  of  it,  the  dedication,  must  hap 
pily  have  been  very  soon  gathered  to  its  fathers; 
but  it  has  two  points  of  interest.  It  is  dedicated 
to  Walton  by  a  certain  S.  P.,  who  may  have  been 
the  Samuel  Purchasof  the  "Pilgrims;  "  and  in  this 
dedication  there  are  expressions  which  show  that 
Walton's  character  was  already,  in  his  twenty- 
sixth  year,  marked  by  the  same  attractiveness  and 
purity  and  the  same  aptness  for  friendship  which 
endeared  him  in  later  life  to  so  many  good  and  em 
inent  men.  S.  P.,  after  calling  him  his  "more 
than  thrice -beloved  friend,"  tells  him  that  he  is 
the  cause  that  the  poem  "is  now  as  it  is,"  and  that 
it  might  have  been  called  his  had  it  been  better, 
but  that  "No  ill  thing  can  be  clothed  with  thy 
verse."  "We  should  infer  that  Walton  had  done 
much  in  the  way  of  revision,  and  not  only  this,  but 
that  he  was  already  known,  among  his  friends  at 
least,  as  a  writer  of  verse  himself.  It  is  puzzling, 
however,  that  the  first  edition  was  published  in 
1613,  when  Walton  was  barely  twenty,  and  that 
the  second  differs  from  the  first  in  a  single  word 
only.  In  the  only  known  copy  of  this  earlier  edi 
tion  (which,  to  be  sure,  is  otherwise  imperfect)  the 
dedication  is  not  to  be  found.  Sir  Harris  Nicolas 
suggests  that  Walton  may  have  revised  the  poem  in 
manuscript,  but  it  seems  altogether  unlikely  that  he 


64  WALTON 

should  have  been  called  in  as  a  consulting  physician 
at  so  early  an  age.  More  than  twenty  years  later, 
in  the  preface  to  his  Life  of  Donne,  he  speaks  of 
his  "artless  pencil,"  and  several  times  elsewhere  al 
ludes  to  his  literary  inadequacy.  But  this  depre 
cation  may  have  been  merely  a  shiver  of  his  habit 
ual  modesty,  or,  as  is  more  likely,  a  device  of  his 
literary  adroitness.  He  certainly  must  have  had 
considerable  practice  in  the  making  of  verse  before 
he  wrote  his  Elegy  on  Donne  (1633),  his  first  pub 
lished  essay  in  authorship.  The  versification  of 
this,  if  sometimes  rather  stiff,  is  for  the  most  part 
firm  and  not  inharmonious.  It  is  easier  in  its  gait 
than  that  of  Donne  in  his  Satires,  and  shows  the 
manly  influence  of  Jonson. 

Walton,  at  any  rate,  in  course  of  time,  attained, 
at  least  in  prose,  to  something  which,  if  it  may 
not  be  called  style,  was  a  very  charming  way  of 
writing,  all  the  more  so  that  he  has  an  innocent 
air  of  not  knowing  how  it  is  done.  Natural  en 
dowment  and  predisposition  may  count  for  nine  in 
ten  of  the  chances  of  success  in  this  competition; 
but  no  man  ever  achieved,  as  Walton  sometimes 
did,  a  simplicity  which  leaves  criticism  helpless, 
by  the  mere  light  of  nature  alone.  Nor  am  I 
speaking  without  book.  In  his  Life  of  Herbert 
he  prints  a  poem  of  Donne's  addressed  to  Her 
bert's  mother,  in  which  there  is  allusion  to  certain 
hymns.  Walton  adds  a  few  words  which  seem  to 
follow  each  other  with  as  little  forethought  as  the 
notes  of  a  thrush's  song:  "These  hymns  are  now 
lost  to  us,  but  doubtless  they  were  such  as  they 


WALTON  65 

two  now  sing  in  Heaven."  Now  on  the  inside 
cover  of  his  Eusebius  Walton  has  written  three 
attempts  at  this  sentence,  each  of  them  very  far 
from  the  concise  beauty  to  which  he  at  last  con 
strained  himself.  Simplicity,  when  it  is  not  a  care 
less  gift  of  the  Muse,  is  the  last  and  most  painful 
achievement  of  conscientious  self-denial.  He  seems 
also  to  have  had  the  true  literary  memory,  which 
stores  up  the  apt  or  pleasing  word  for  use  on  occa 
sion.  I  have  noticed  more  than  one  instance  of  it, 
but  one  must  suffice.  In  Donne's  beautiful  poem, 
"A  Valediction  Forbidding  Mourning,"  is  this 
stanza :  — 

"  Dull  sublunary  lovers'  love, 
Whose  soul  is  sense,  cannot  admit 
Absence,  because  that  doth  remove 
Those  things  that  elemented  it." 

Walton  felt  the  efficacy  of  the  word  "elemented," 
and  laid  it  by  for  employment  at  the  first  vacancy. 
I  find  it  more  than  once  in  his  writings. 

Of  the  personal  history  of  Walton  during  his  life 
in  London  we  know  very  little  more  than  that  he 
was  living  in  Fleet  Street  in  1624,  that  from  1628 
to  1644  he  lived  in  Chancery  Lane,  and  that  he 
was  twice  married.  Perhaps  the  most  important 
event  during  all  these  years  in  its  value  to  his  mind 
and  character  was  his  making  the  acquaintance 
of  Donne,  to  whose  preaching  he  was  a  sedulous 
listener.  This  acquaintance  became  a  friendship 
by  which  he  profited  till  Donne's  death  in  1631. 
There  needs  no  further  witness  to  his  intelligence 

o 

or  to  his  worth. 


66  WALTON 

Walton's  first  wife,  to  whom  he  was  married  in 
1624,  was  Rachel  Floud,  daughter  of  Susannah 
Craiimer,  who  was  the  daughter  of  Thomas,  grand- 
nephew  of  the  martyr.  By  her,  who  died  in  1640, 
he  had  six  sons  and  one  daughter,  all  of  whom  died 
in  infancy  or  early  childhood.  Six  years  after  his 
first  wife's  death  Walton  married  Anne  Ken,  a 
sister  by  the  half  blood  of  Bishop  Ken.  Of  this 
marriage  there  were  three  children,  —  one  son, 
Izaak,  who  lived  but  a  short  time;  a  daughter 
Anne ;  and  another  Izaak,  who  survived  his  father, 
and  died  in  1719,  a  canon  of  Salisbury. 

In  the  third  edition  of  "The  Complete  Angler" 
(1664)  appear  for  the  first  time  some  verses  by 
Walton  called  "The  Angler's  Wish."  Among 
other  blisses  is  mentioned  that  of  hearing  "my 
Chlora  sing  a  song."  In  the  fifth  edition  (1676) 
"Kenna"  is  substituted  for  "Chlora, "and  the  ref 
erence  to  Walton's  second  wife  is  obvious.  It  has 
been  supposed  that  "Chlora"  was  an  imperfect  an 
agram  for  "Rachel;"  and  that  Walton,  like  some 
better  poets,  Poe  notably,  had  economized  his  in 
spiration  by  serving  up  the  same  verses  cold  to  a 
second  or  even  third  mistress;  but  he  was  inca 
pable  of  such  amatory  double-dealing.  Sir  Harris 
Nicolas,  by  calling  attention  to  the  dates,  at  least 
makes  it  very  unlikely  that  he  was  guilty  of  it. 
The  verses  were  first  published  twenty  years  after 
the  death  of  his  first  wife,  and  the  name  "Kenna  " 
does  not  appear  till  his  second  had  been  fourteen 
years  in  her  grave.  Sir  Harris  failed  to  remark 
that  Walton  uses  "  Chlora "  as  the  name  of  a 


WALTON  67 

shepherdess  in  an  eclogue  on  the  restoration  of 
Charles  II.  Confronted  with  this  fact,  the  sup 
posed  anagram  turns  out  to  be  a  mare's-nest,  like 
the  "Lutero  "  Rossetti  found  in  Dante's  "  Veltro." 
Anne  Walton  herself  died  in  1662. 

There  is  no  certainty  as  to  what  Walton's  occu 
pation  may  have  been  further  than  that  he  was  a 
tradesman  of  some  sort,  and  probably,  since  he  was 
thirty  years  in  amassing  the  modest  competence 
that  sufficed  him,  in  a  small  way.  Whether  large 
or  small  is  of  little  interest  to  us,  for  his  real  busi 
ness  in  this  world  was  to  write  the  Lives  and  "  The 
Complete  Angler,"  and  to  leave  the  example  of  a 
useful  and  unspotted  life  behind  him.  But  it  is 
amusing  to  find  Mr.  Major,  with  that  West-End 
view  of  the  realities  of  life  which  Englishmen  of  a 
certain  class  feel  it  proper  to  take,  arguing  that 
Walton's  business  must  have  been  of  a  wholesale 
character  because  the  place  in  which  it  was  carried 
on  was  cramped,  and  moreover  shared  by  a  certain 
John  Mason,  hosier.  One  is  irresistibly  tempted 
to  parody  the  notorious  verse,  and  say,  — 

"  His  trade  was  great  because  his  shop  was  small." 

"  What  room  would  there  have  been  for  the  display 
of  goods?"  asks  Mr.  Major,  with  triumphant  con 
viction,  forgetting  that  in  those  days  the  space  for 
that  purpose  was  found  in  the  street.  Walton's 
removal  to  Chancery  Lane  may  imply  an  enlarge 
ment  of  business;  and  this,  so  far  as  it  goes,  must 
suffice  to  console  whoever  values  a  man  not  for 
what  he  is,  but  by  the  round  of  the  social  ladder  on 
which  he  happens  to  be  standing.  If  the  humble- 


68  WALTON 

ness  of  Walton's  station  helped  him  toward  that 
unaffected  modesty  which  is  so  gracious  in  him 
and  so  dignified,  we  may  well  be  thankful  for  it. 

Walton  seems  to  have  done  his  duty  as  a  citizen 
with  exemplary  fidelity.  Between  1632  and  1644, 
when  he  moved  out  of  the  parish,  the  register  of 
St.  Dunstan's  in  the  West  shows  him  to  have  been 
successively  scavenger  (which  Sir  Harris  Nicolas 
prudently  deodorizes  by  calling  it  vaguely  "a  par 
ish  office"),  juryman,  constable,  grand-juryman, 
overseer  of  the  poor,  and  vestry -man,  —  enough, 
one  might  say,  to  satisfy  any  reasonable  ambition 
for  civic  honors  at  a  time  when  they  meant  honest 
work  done  for  honest  wages. 

Walton's  first  appearance  as  an  author  was 
in  an  elegy,  which,  after  the  fashion  of  the  day, 
accompanied  the  first  edition  of  Donne's  poems 
(1633).  This  species  of  verse,  whether  in  the  writ 
ing  or  the  reading,  is  generally  the  most  dreary 
compulsory  labor  to  which  man  can  be  doomed. 
The  poet  climbs  the  doleful  treadmill  without  get 
ting  an  inch  the  higher ;  and  as  we  watch  him  we 
are  wearied  with  the  reality  of  a  toil  which  seems 
to  have  no  real  object.  Once  in  my  life  I  have 
heard  a  funeral  elegy  which  was  wholly  adequate. 
It  was  the  long  quavering  howl  of  a  dog  under  a 
window  of  the  chamber  in  which  his  master  had  at 
that  moment  died.  It  was  Nature's  cry  of  grief 
and  terror  at  first  sight  of  Death.  That  faithful 
creature  was  not  trying  to  say  something;  so  far 
from  it,  that  even  the  little  skill  in  articulation 
which  his  race  has  acquired  was  choked  in  the  gripe 


WALTON  69 

of  such  disaster.  Consolation  would  shrink  away 
abashed  from  the  presence  of  so  helpless  a  grief. 
With  elegiac  poets  it  is  otherwise,  for  it  is  of  them 
selves  and  of  their  verses  that  they  are  thinking. 
They  distil  a  precious  cordial  from  their  tears. 
They  console  themselves  by  playing  variations  on 
their  inconsolability.  Their  triumphs  are  won  over 
our  artistic  sense,  not  over  our  human  fellow-feeling. 
Yet  now  and  then  in  the  far  inferior  verse  of  far 
inferior  men  there  will  be  some  difficult  word  with 
a  sob  in  it  that  moves  as  no  artifice  can  move,  and 
brings  back  to  each  of  us  his  private  loss  with  a 
strange  sense  of  comfort  in  feeling  that  somewhere, 
no  matter  how  far  away  in  the  past,  there  was  one 
who  had  suffered  like  ourselves  and  would  not  be 
appeased  by  setting  his  pain  to  music.  There  is 
something  of  this  in  Walton's  Elegy  on  Donne.  I 
do  not  believe  that  he  was  thinking  of  his  poetical 
paces  as  he  wrote  it ;  or,  if  he  was,  he  forgets  them 
from  time  to  time  and  falls  into  his  natural  gait. 
What  he  said  ten  years  later  in  writing  of  Cart- 
wright  seems  true  of  this,  — 

"  Muses,  I  need  you  not,  for  Grief  and  I 
Can  in  your  absence  weave  an  elegy." 

I  should  be  yielding  to  my  partiality  for  Walton 
if  I  called  these  verses  poetry ;  but  there  is  at  least, 
in  the  eloquence  of  their  honest  sorrow,  a  tendency 
to  become  so  which  stops  little  short  of  it,  and 
which  is  too  often  missed  in  the  carefully  cadenced 
ululation  of  similar  efforts.  Here,  indeed,  there 
seems  no  effort  at  all,  and  that  surely  is  a  crowning 
mercy.  There  is  one  phrase  whose  laconic  pathos 


70  WALTON 

I  find  it  hard  to  match  elsewhere.  It  is  where  he 
bids  his  thoughts  "forget  he  loved  me."  This  is 
the  true  good  breeding  of  sorrow.  It  may  as  well 
be  said  here,  once  for  all,  that  Walton  was  no 
poet,  so  far  as  rhythm  is  an  essential  element  of 
expression.  His  lyrics  are  mechanical  and  club- 
footed.  He  succeeded  best  in  that  measure,  the 
rhymed  couplet  of  ten  syllables,  which  detaches  it 
self  least  irreconcilably  from  prose.  The  nearer 
an  author  comes  to  being  a  poet,  so  much  the  worse 
for  him  should  he  persist  in  making  verse  the  in 
terpreter  of  his  thought;  so  much  the  better  for 
him  should  he  wisely  abandon  it  for  something 
closer  to  the  habitual  dialect  of  men.  I  think  that 
Walton's  prose  owes  much  of  its  charm  to  the  po 
etic  sentiment  in  him  which  was  denied  a  refuge  in 
verse,  and  that  his  practice  in  metres  may  have 
given  to  his  happier  periods  a  measure  and  a  music 
they  would  otherwise  have  wanted.  That  he  had 
this  practice  has  a  direct  bearing  on  the  question 
of  the  authorship  of  "Thealma  and  Clearchus,"  of 
which  I  must  say  something  at  the  proper  time. 
Walton  had  not  the  strong  passions  which  poets 
break  to  the  light  harness  of  verse,  and  indeed 
they  and  longevity  such  as  his  are  foaled  by  dams 
of  very  different  race.  But  he  loved  poetry,  and 
the  poetry  he  loved  was  generally  good.  He  had 
also  some  critical  judgment  in  it.  Speaking  of 
Marlowe's  "Come  live  with  me,"  and  Kaleigh's 
answer  to  it,  he  says,  "They  were  old-fashioned 
poetry,  but  choicely  good;  I  think  much  better 
than  the  strong  lines  that  are  now  in  fashion  in 


WALTON  71 

this  critical  age."  His  simplicity,  it  should  seem, 
was  not  only  a  gift,  but  a  choice  as  well. 

Not  long  before  the  publication  of  a  volume  of 
Donne's  sermons  (1640),  Walton  wrote  a  life  of 
the  author,  which  was  prefixed  to  them.  This 
piety  was  not  volunteered,  but  devolved  on  him 
by  the  death  of  their  common  friend,  Sir  Henry 
Wotton  (December,  1639),  for  whom  he  had  been 
collecting  the  material.  Donne  lost  nothing,  and 
the  world  gained  much,  by  this  substitution;  for 
Walton  thus  learned  by  accident  where  his  true 
talent  lay,  and  was  encouraged  to  write  those  other 
Lives  which,  with  this,  make  the  volume  that  has 
endeared  him  to  all  who  choose  that  their  souls 
should  keep  good  company.  In  a  preface,  beauti 
ful  alike  for  its  form  and  the  sentiment  embodied 
in  it,  after  a  pretty  apology  for  his  own  deficien 
cies,  he  says,  "But  be  this  to  the  disadvantage  of 
the  person  represented,  certain  I  am  it  is  to  the 
advantage  of  the  beholder  who  shall  here  see  the 
author's  [Donne]  picture  in  a  natural  dress,  which 
ought  to  beget  faith  in  what  is  spoken."  And 
not  only  that,  but  Walton's  picture  too!  In  this 
preference  of  the  homely  and  familiar,  and  in  an 
artlessness  which  is  not  quite  so  artless  as  it  woidd 
fain  appear,  lies  the  charm  that  never  stales  of 
Walton's  manner.  He  would  have  applied  his 
friend  Wotton's  verse  to  himself,  and  affirmed 
"simple  truth  his  utmost  skill,"  but  he  was  also  a 
painstaking  artist  in  his  own  way. 

As  illustrations,  take  this  sentence  from  the  Life 
of  Donne,  describing  him  after  the  death  of  his 
wife :  — 


72  WALTON 

"  Thus,  as  the  Israelites  sat  mourning  by  the  rivers  of 
Babylon  when  they  remembered  Zion,  so  he  gave  some 
ease  to  his  oppressed  heart  by  thus  venting  his  sorrows ; 
thus  he  began  the  day  and  ended  the  night ;  ended  the 
restless  night  and  began  the  weary  day  in  lamenta 
tions." 

Or  this,  of  the  nightingale,  worthy  to  compete  with 
Crashawe's,  or  with  Jeremy  Taylor's  lark:  — 

"But  the  nightingale,  another  of  my  airy  creatures, 
breathes  such  sweet  loud  music  out  of  her  little  instru 
mental  throat,  that  it  might  make  mankind  to  think  mir 
acles  are  not  ceased.  He  that  at  midnight,  when  the 
very  laborer  sleeps  securely,  should  hear,  as  I  have  very 
often,  the  clear  airs,  the  sweet  descants,  the  natural  ris 
ing  and  falling,  the  doubling  and  redoubling  of  her 
voice,  might  well  be  lifted  above  earth,  and  say,  '  Lord, 
what  music  hast  Thou  provided  for  the  saints  in  heaven, 
when  Thou  affordest  bad  men  such  music  on  earth  ?  " 

He  had  learned  of  his  great  contemporaries  also 
to  turn  and  wind  those  many-membered  periods 
which  in  unskilful  hands  become  otherwise-minded 
as  a  herd  of  swine.  The  passage  in  the  Introduc 
tion  to  his  revised  Life  of  Donne  where  he  com 
pares  himself  to  Pompey's  bondman,  and  that  in 
the  Preface  to  the  Life  of  Herbert  in  which  he 
speaks  of  Mary  Magdalene,  may  serve  as  examples ; 
and  in  these  neither  are  the  words  caught  at  ran 
dom,  nor  do  they  fall  into  those  noble  modulations 
by  chance.  And  he  could  be  succinct  at  need,  as 
where  he  says:  "He  that  praises  Richard  Hooker 
praises  God,  who  hath  given  such  gifts  to  men." 

Walton  tells  us  that  he  saw  the  Scotch  Cove- 


WALTON  73 

nanters,  when  in  1644  they  "came  marching  with  it 
[the  Covenant]  gloriously  upon  their  pikes  and  in 
their  hats.  .  .  .  This  I  saw  and  suffered  by  it," 
whether  in  mind  or  purse  he  leaves  doubtful.  In 
this  year  he  ceased  to  be  an  inhabitant  of  the  Parish 
of  St.  Dunstan;  and  from  that  time  till  1650, 
when  he  took  a  house  in  Clerkenwell,  he  for  the 
most  part  vanishes.  We  know  incidentally  that 
he  was  in  London  once  in  the  course  of  the  year 
1645,  and  once  again  in  that  of  1647.  But  these 
may  have  been  flying  visits,  for  there  is  no  evidence 
that  his  second  marriage  (1646)  took  place  there ; 
and  the  statement  of  Antony  a  Wood,  who  knew 
him  well,  makes  it  probable  that  he  may  have  spent 
at  Stafford,  where  he  had  a  small  property,  the 
years  during  which  he  cannot  be  shown  to  have 
lived  anywhere  else.  To  a  man  with  his  opinions, 
London  could  not  have  been  more  amiable  during 
the  Long  Parliament  and  the  Protectorate  than 
during  the  reign  of  Charles  II.  to  a  man  of  his 
morals. 

The  solitude  of  Stafford,  where,  to  cite  his  own 
words,  he  could 

"  Linger  long1  days  by  Swaynham  brook," 

seems  more  suitable  to  the  conception  and  gestation 
of  such  a  book  as  "The  Complete  Angler"  than 
London  could  have  been  to  a  man  whose  compan 
ionable  instincts  were  so  strong  that  even  fish-, 
ing  was  not  perfect  happiness  without  a  friend  to 
share  it. 

That  the  "Angler"  was  begun  some  years  be- 


74  WALTON 

fore  it  was  published  is  rendered  more  probable 
by  Walton's  saying  of  Marlowe's  song  which  he 
quotes,  that  it  "was  made  at  least  fifty  years  ago." 
He  was  likely  to  know  something  about  Marlowe 
through  his  own  friendship  with  Dray  ton,  who  was 
the  first  adequately  to  signalize  the  poet's  merit. 
Marlowe  died  in  1593,  and  the  "at  least  fifty 
years"  would  bring  us  down  to  the  Stafford  pe-- 
riod.  There  are  passages  in  Walton  which  lead  me 
to  think  he  may  have  spent  abroad  some  part  of 
the  time  during  which  he  is  invisible  to  us.  He 
set  great  store  by  the  advantages  of  foreign  travel, 
and  gave  his  son  the  benefit  of  them. 

It  seems  likely  that  he  gave  up  business  in  1644, 
and  it  may  have  been  at  Stafford  that  he  saw 
some  foraging  party  from  Leslie's  army  which  would 
not  have  spared  his  uncovenanted  chickens.  In 
ternal  evidence  makes  it  likely  that  in  1646  he  wrote 
the  preface  to  Quarles's  "Shepherd's  Eclogues," 
and  that  he  was  on  terms  of  friendly  acquaintance 
with  him  as  a  brother  of  the  angle.  He  may  have 
borrowed  the  name  "Clora"  from  Quarles.  It  is 
true  that  he  has  put  an  h  into  it,  but  his  spelling  is 
always  according  to  his  own  lights  (mostly  will-o'- 
the-wisps)  ;  and  there  are  people  who  think  crystals 
less  lustrous  without  that  letter  which  may  be  picked 
up  anywhere  in  the  land  of  Cokayne,  where  it 
is  dropped  so  often.  In  1650  he  published  the 
"KeliquiaB  Wottoniana3,"  prefixing  to  them  a  life 
of  the  author,  printed  in  haste,  he  tells  us,  but  cor 
rected  in  later  editions.  The  "Angler  "  appeared 
in  1653,  and  a  second  edition  came  out  two  years 


WALTON  <0 

later.  It  was  while  he  was  in  London  during  this 
latter  year,  probably  to  correct  his  proof-sheets, 
that  he  met  Sanderson,  who  was  there  to  perform 
the  same  function  for  the  preface  to  a  volume  of 
sermons.  Walton's  account  of  this  meeting  is  so 
characteristic  that  I  shall  quote  it :  — 

"  About  the  time  of  his  printing  this  excellent  Preface, 
I  met  him  accidentally  in  London  in  sad-colored  clothes, 
and,  God  knows,  far  from  being  costly.  The  place  of 
our  meeting  was  near  to  Little  Britain,  where  he  had 
been  to  buy  a  book  which  he  then  had  in  his  hand.  We 
had  no  inclination  to  part  presently,  and  therefore  turned 
to  stand  in  a  corner  under  a  pent-house,  for  it  began  to 
rain,  and  immediately  the  wind  rose  and  the  rain  in 
creased  so  much  that  both  became  so  inconvenient  as  to 
force  us  into  a  cleanly  house,  where  we  had  bread,  cheese. 
ale,  and  a  fire  for  our  money.  This  rain  and  wind  were 
so  obliging  to  me  as  to  force  our  stay  there  for  at  least 
an  hour,  to  my  great  content  and  advantage.  .  .  .  And 
I  gladly  remember  and  mention  it  as  an  argument  of 
my  happiness  and  his  great  humility  and  condescen 
sion." 

It  is  exactly  as  if  he  were  telling  us  of  it,  and 
this  sweet  persuasiveness  of  the  living  and  naturally 
cadenced  voice  is  never  wanting  in  Walton.  It  is 
indeed  his  distinction,  and  it  is  a  very  rare  quality 
in  writers,  upon  most  of  whom,  if  they  ever  hap 
pily  forget  themselves  and  fall  into  the  tone  of  talk, 
the  pen  too  soon  comes  sputtering  in.  The  pas 
sage  is  interesting  too  because  it  illustrates  both 
Walton's  love  of  good  company  and  his  Boswellian 
sensitiveness  to  the  attraction  of  superior  men. 


76  WALTON 

Much  as  he  loved  fishing,  it  was  in  the  minds  of 
such  men  that  he  loved  best  to  fish.  And  what 
a  memory  was  his!  The  place,  the  sad-colored 
clothes,  the  book  just  bought,  the  rain  and  then 
the  wind,  the  pent-house,  the  tavern,  the  bread, 
the  ale,  the  fire,  —  everything  is  there  that  makes 
a  picture.  Then  he  reports  Sanderson's  discourse; 
and  having  done  that,  is  reminded  that  this  is  a 
good  time  to  give  us  a  description  of  his  person. 
In  reading  Walton's  Lives  (and  no  wonder  Johnson 
loved  them  so l)  I  have  a  feeling  that  I  have  met 
him  in  the  street  and  am  hearing  them  from  his 
owrn  lips.  I  ask  him  about  Donne,  let  us  say.  He 
begins,  but  catching  sight  of  some  one  who  passes, 
gives  me  in  parenthesis  an  account  of  him,  comes 
back  to  Donne,  and  keeps  on  with  him  till  some 
body  else  goes  by  about  whom  he  has  an  anecdote 
to  tell;  and  so  we  get  a  leash  of  biographies  in  one. 
It  is  very  delightful,  and  though  more  rambling 
than  Plutarch,  comes  nearer  to  him  than  any  other 
life-writing  I  can  think  of.  Indeed,  I  should  be 
inclined  to  say  that  Walton  had  a  genius  for  ram 
bling  rather  than  that  it  was  his  foible.  The  com 
fortable  feeling  he  gives  us  that  we  have  a  definite 
purpose,  mitigated  with  the  license  to  forget  it  at 
the  first  temptation  and  take  it  up  again  as  if  no 
thing  had  happened,  thus  satisfying  at  once  the 
conscientious  and  the  natural  man,  is  one  of  Wal 
ton's  most  prevailing  charms.  What  vast  bal- 

1  Gray  must  have  loved  them  too,  and  his  Ode  on  a  Distant 
Prospect  of  Eton  College  was  suggested  by  a  passage  in  the  Life 
of  Wotton. 


WALTON  11 

ances  of  leisure  does  he  not  put  to  our  credit !  To 
read  him  is  to  go  a-fishing  with  all  its  bewitching 
charms  and  contingencies.  If  there  be  many  a  dull 
reach  in  the  stream  of  his  discourse,  where  contem 
plation  might  innocently  lapse  into  slumber,  it  is 
full  also  of  nooks  and  eddies  where  nothing  but  our 
own  incompetence  will  balk  us  of  landing  a  fine 
fish.  In  this  story  of  his  meeting  with  Sander 
son  there  is  another  point  to  be  noticed.  Wal 
ton's  memory  is  always  discreet,  always  well-bred. 
It  never  blabs.  I  think  that  one  little  fact  is 
purposely  omitted  here,  namely,  who  paid  for  the 
good  cheer  at  the  tavern.  The  scot  was  paid,  to 
be  sure,  with  uour  money,"  but  I  doubt  very  much 
whether  the  poor  country  parson's  purse  were  the 
lighter  for  it. 

In  1658  Walton  published  separately  the  second 
and  revised  edition  of  his  Life  of  Donne,  with  a 
preface  engagingly  full  of  himself.  I  say  "enga 
gingly  full,"  because  when  he  speaks  of  himself  he 
never  seems  to  usurp  on  other  people,  but  only  to 
share  with  all  mankind  a  confidence  to  which  they 
had  as  good  a  right  as  he.  In  1660  he  prefixed  a 
congratulatory  eclogue  on  the  Restoration  to  a  vol 
ume  of  Alexander  Brome's  Songs.  In  this  he  con 
trives  to  bring  in  the  praise  of  his  friend's  verses, 
and  combines  the  tediousness  of  the  Commendatory 
and  the  Birthday  styles  with  entire  success.  Never 
inspired  in  verse,  he  becomes  laborious  unless 
where  his  feelings  are  stirred  to  the  roots,  as  in  the 
Elegy  on  Donne. 

In  1662  he  was  at  Worcester,  the  guest,  proba- 


78  WALTON 

bly,  of  his  friend  Bishop  Morley.  Here  his  second 
wife  died  and  lies  buried  in  the  cathedral,  with  an 
inscription  by  him,  simple  and  affectionate.  In 
that  year  he  removed  with  Morley  (on  his  trans 
lation)  to  Winchester,  and  there  spent  the  rest  of 
his  vigorous  old  age.  From  time  to  time  he  must 
have  visited  Charles  Cotton,  whose  father  he  had 
known.  We  have  no  record  of  these  visits  (spent 
in  fishing)  further  than  that  one  of  them  is  spoken 
of  in  a  letter  of  Walton  as  proposed  in  1676. 
This  was  in  his  eighty -third  year,  and  implies  in 
him  that  longevity  of  the  taste  for  out-of-door 
sports  and  of  the  muscle  to  endure  their  fatigues 
which  are  almost  peculiar  to  Englishmen.  Cotton 
was  a  Royalist  country-gentleman  with  a  handsome 
estate,  which,  after  sidling  safely  through  the  in 
tricacies  of  the  Civil  War,  trickled  pleasantly  away 
through  the  chinks  of  its  master's  profusion.  He 
was  an  excellent  poet  and  a  thorough  master  of 
succulently  idiomatic  English,  which  he  treated 
with  a  country-gentlemanlike  familiarity,  as  his 
master,  Montaigne,  had  treated  French.  The  two 
men  loved  one  another,  and  this  speaks  well  for 
the  social  charity  of  both.  There  must  have  been 
delicately  understood  and  mutually  respectful  con 
ventions  of  silence  in  an  intimacy  between  the  pla 
cidly  believing  author  of  the  Lives  and  the  translator 
of  him  who  invented  the  Essay.  Walton  loved  a 
gentleman  of  blue  blood  as  honestly  as  Johnson 
did,  and  was,  I  am  sure,  as  sturdily  independent 
withal.  He  could  condone  almost  anything,  that 
had  no  taint  of  personal  dishonor,  in  a  gentleman 


WALTON  79 

and  a  Cavalier.  His  nature  was  incapable  of  envy, 
and,  himself  of  obscurest  lineage,  there  was  nothing 
he  relished  more  keenly  than  the  long  pedigrees  of 
other  people.  While  he  enjoyed,  he  had  also,  I 
fancy,  not  merely  a  sense  of  joint  ownership,  but 
perhaps  of  something  like  over-lordship,  as  in  that 
winsome  passage  of  the  "Angler"  he  makes  Vena 
tor  say,  after  describing  the  landscape  he  has  been 
looking  on:  "As  I  thus  sat  joying  in  nry  own 
happy  condition  and  pitying  the  poor  rich  man  that 
owns  this  and  many  other  pleasant  groves  and  mead 
ows  about  me,  I  did  thankfully  remember  what  my 
Saviour  said,  that  the  meek  possess  the  earth." 
But  with  him  the  more  noble  the  ancestry,  the 
worse  for  their  degenerous  representative.  A  ped 
igree  had  not  the  right  flavor  for  Walton  unless 
newly  spiced  with  achievement  from  generation 
to  generation.  In  his  Life  of  Sanderson,  after 
proclaiming  with  heraldic  satisfaction  that  he  was 
of  ancient  family,  he  blows  this  trumpet-blast 
against  the  recreant :  — 

"  For  titles  not  acquired,  but  derived  only,  do  but 
show  us  who  of  our  ancestors  have  and  how  they  have 
achieved  that  honor  which  their  descendants  claim  and 
may  not  be  worthy  to  enjoy.  For  if  those  titles  descend 
to  persons  that  degenerate  into  vice  and  break  off  the 
continued  line  of  learning  or  valor  or  that  virtue  that 
acquired  them,  they  destroy  the  very  foundation  upon 
which  that  honor  was  built,  and  all  the  rubbish  of  their 
vices  ought  to  fall  heavy  on  such  dishonorable  heads ; 
ought  to  fall  so  heavy  as  to  degrade  them  of  their  titles 
and  blast  their  memories  with  reproach  and  shame." 


80  WALTON 

It  is  plain  that  Walton,  had  he  lived  now,  would 
have  made  short  work  with  an  unsavory  Peer. 
It  is  noticeable  too  that  he  gives  Learning  prece 
dence  over  Valor. 

Walton  had  a  genius  for  friendships  and  an 
amiability  of  nature  ample  for  the  comfortable 
housing  of  many  at  a  time;  he  had  even  a  special 
genius  for  bishops,  and  seems  to  have  known 
nearly  the  whole  Episcopal  bench  of  his  day ;  but 
his  friendship,  like  Lamb's,  did  not  slink  away 
from  a  fortune  out  at  elbows,  and  he  had,  I  more 
than  suspect,  a  curiosity  hospitable  enough  to  en 
tertain  a  broken  gentleman  (like  the  Carey  whom 
he  speaks  of  having  known)  if  he  had  good  talk  or 
narrative  or  honest  mirth  in  him  and  producible 
on  demand.  His  friend  Alexander  Brome  was 
surely  no  precisian.  But  these  less  reputable  inti 
mates  he  made  welcome  in  a  back-parlor  of  his 
mind,  away  from  the  street  and  with  the  curtains 
drawn,  as  if  he  would  fain  hide  them  even  from 
himself.1  His  habitual  temper  sought  serious  and 
thoughtful  company,  and  he  valued  respectability 
as  a  wise  man  must,  his  own  self-respect  as  a  good 
man  ought.  But  Cotton  was  a  man  of  genius,2 
whose  life  was  cleanlier  than  his  Muse  always 
cared  to  be.  If  he  wrote  the  Virgil  Travesty,  he 

1  In  his  Life  of  Hooker,  having  to  speak  of  George  Sandys,  he 
mentions  his  Travels,  and  his  translations  in  verse  from  the  Psalms 
and  Job.     He  is  silent  about  his  version  of  Ovid's  Metamorphoses 
(done  in  Virginia),  though  the  book  was  in  his  own  library. 

2  Not  yet  extinct  among  his  descendants.     The  late  Lady  Ma 
rian  Alf ord,  besides  her  social  talents,  had  every  gift  that  Fortune 
bestows  on  the  artist  save  that  of  poverty. 


WALTON  81 

also  wrote  verses  which  the  difficult  Wordsworth 
could  praise,  and  a  poem  of  gravely  noble  mood 
addressed  to  Walton  on  his  Lives,  in  which  he 
shows  a  knowledge  of  what  goodness  is  that  no  bad 
man  could  have  acquired.  Let  one  line  of  it  at 
least  shine  in  my  page,  not  as  a  sample  but  for 
its  own  dear  sake :  — 

"  For  in  a  virtuous  act  all  good  men  share." 

Those  must  have  been  delightful  evenings  which 
the  two  friends  spent  together  after  the  day's  fish 
ing.  Well  into  the  night  they  must  have  lingered, 
with  much  excellent  discourse  of  books  and  men, 
now  serious,  now  playful,  much  personal  anecdote 
and  reminiscence.  Perhaps  it  was  as  well  that 
Dr.  Morley  should  be  at  Winchester,  with  all  re 
spect  be  it  said,  and  not  forgetting  that  Walton 
has  told  us  he  "loved  such  mirth  as  did  not  make 
friends  ashamed  to  look  upon  one  another  next 
morning." 

At  Walton's  request,  Cotton  wrote  in  ten  days 
the  treatise  on  fly-fishing  which  was  added  to  the 
fifth  edition  of  "The  Complete  Angler"  in  1676. 
What  he  says  of  Walton  in  it  is  interesting,  and 
the  reverence  he  expresses  for  his  character  espe 
cially  so  as  coming  from  a  man  of  the  world.  "My 
father  Walton,"  he  makes  Piscator  say,  "will  be 
seen  twice  in  no  man's  company  he  does  not  like, 
and  likes  none  but  such  as  he  believes  to  be  very 
honest  men."  It  should  be  remembered  that  in 
those  days  the  word  "honest"  had  to  the  initiated 
ear  a  political  and  ecclesiastical  as  well  as  a  moral 


82  WALTON 

meaning.  Cotton  was  a  far  better  poet  than  Wal 
ton,  and  had  a  more  practised  hand;  yet  his  sup 
plement  to  the  "Angler"  wants  that  charm  of  in 
advertency  with  which  Walton  knew  how  to  make 
his  most  careful  sentences  waylay  the  ear,  and  his 
truly  poetic  sympathy  with  the  sights  and  sounds 
of  every-day  Nature.  Its  chief  value,  I  think,  lies 
in  this  illustrative  contrast. 

In  1665  Walton  wrote  his  Life  of  Hooker,  less 
a  labor  of  love  than  the  others,  but  containing 
that  homely  picture  of  him  reading  Horace  as  he 
tended  his  scanty  sheep,  and  called  away  by  his 
wife  to  rock  the  cradle.  In  1670  came  the  Life  of 
Herbert,  written,  he  tells  us,  chiefly  to  please  him 
self.  Some  time  before  1678,  it  is  uncertain  when, 
his  daughter  Anne  became  the  wife  of  the  Reverend 
William  Hawkins,  one  of  the  prebends  of  Win 
chester,  and  with  them  he  seems  to  have  spent  his 
latter  years.  In  that  year  he  wrote  the  Life  of 
Sanderson,  which,  as  showing  no  sign  of  mental 
disrepair,  is  surely  an  almost  unparalleled  feat  for 
a  man  of  eighty -five.  Length  of  days  is  one  of 
the  blessings  of  the  Old  Testament,  and  surely  it 
might  be  added  to  the  Beatitudes  of  the  New, 
when,  as  with  Walton,  it  means  only  a  longer 
ripening,  a  more  abundant  leisure  to  look  back 
wards  without  self-reproach,  and  forwards  with  an 
assured  gratitude  to  God  for  a  future  goodness 
like  the  past.  There  is,  perhaps,  if  we  conde 
scend  to  a  purely  utilitarian  view,  no  stronger 
argument  for  belief  in  a  personal  Deity  than  that 
it  makes  possible  this  ennobling  sense  of  gratitude; 


WALTON  83 

and  in  a  time  when  such  possibility  has  been  so 
largely  analyzed  and  refined  away,  Walton's 
habitual  recognition  of  so  direct  and  conscious  an 
obligation  that  he  cannot  resist  the  inter jectional 
expression  of  it  is  a  chief  cause  of  the  solace  and 
refreshment  we  feel  in  reading  him.  As  we  read 
we  inhale  an  odor  from  the  leaves  as  if  flowers 
from  the  garden  of  childhood  had  been  pressed  be 
tween  them,  and  for  a  moment,  by  the  sweet  sophis 
try  of  association,  we  stand  again  among  them 
where  they  grew.  Here  is  incontaminate  piety, 
wholesome  as  bread.  It  is  a  gush  of  involuntary 
emotion  like  that  first  sincere  and  precious  juice 
which  their  own  weight  forces  from  the  grapes.  A 
fine  morning,  a  meadow  flushed  with  primroses, 
are  not  only  good  in  themselves,  but  sweeter  and 
better  because  they  give  him  occasion  to  be  thank 
ful  for  them.  We  may  be  wiser,  but  it  may  be 
doubted  whether  we  are  so  happy,  in  our  self- 
reliant  orphanhood.  He  had  two  pleasures  where 
we  have  but  one,  and  that  one  doubtingly  now  that 
the  shadow  of  the  metaphysic  cloud  has  darkened 
Nature. 

In  1683  Walton  published  "Thealnia  and  Clear- 
chus,  a  pastoral  history  in  smooth  and  easie  verse 
written  long  since  by  John  Chalkhill,  Esq. ,  an  ac- 
quaintant  and  friend  of  Edmund  Spencer"  [sic]. 
The  preface  is  dated  five  years  earlier.  The  poem 
is  incomplete,  with  this  quaint  note  by  Walton 
at  the  end:  "And  here  the  author  died,  and  I 
hope  the  reader  will  be  sorry."  When  Mr.  S.  W. 
Singer  reprinted  it  in  1820  he  expressed  his  doubts 


84  WALTON 

whether  such  a  person  as  John  Chalkhill  had  ever 
existed,  and  his  strong  suspicion  that  it  might  be  a 
youthful  production  of  Walton  himself.  But  sev 
eral  John  (or  Jon)  Chalkhills  have  since  been 
unearthed ;  one  of  them  (who  died  in  1615)  being 
remotely  connected  with  Walton  through  the  mar 
riage  of  his  daughter  with  one  of  the  Kens.  Sir 
Harris  Nicolas,  who  rejects  Mr.  Singer's  suspicion 
as  implying  a  duplicity  of  which  honest  Izaak 
would  have  been  incapable,  drolly  enough  fixes 
upon  another  John  Chalkhill,  Fellow  of  Winchester 
College,  as  the  probable  author  of  the  poem.  This 
he  does  with  Walton's  statement  that  the  author 
was  "an  acquaintant  and  friend"  of  Spenser,  and 
that  of  John  Chalkhill' s  monument  in  Winchester 
Cathedral  that  he  died  in  1679,  octogenarius,  both 
before  him.  Now  Spenser  died  in  1599 ;  and  this 
Chalkhill,  at  least,  could  not  have  known  him. 
But  if  the  other,  who  died  in  1615,  wrote  "Thealma 
and  Clearchus,"  he  certainly  did  not  write  it  as  it 
was  printed  by  Walton.  The  language  is  altogether 
too  modern  for  that,  unless,  indeed,  he  was  en 
dowed  with  a  spirit  of  prophecy  that  both  foresaw 
and  forestalled  the  changes  in  his  mother-tongue. 
The  invariable  use  of  the  possessive  its  and  the 
elision  of  the  e  in  the  past  participle  would  be  con 
clusive.  The  tone  is  also  too  modern,  though  this 
is  more  easily  to  be  felt  than  defined  in  words. 
While  there  is  nothing  that  compels  us  to  accept 
Mr.  Singer's  suggestion  as  to  the  authorship,  it  is 
certain  that  the  poem  has  been  largely  rewritten  by 
somebody,  and  this  must  have  been  Walton.  It 


WALT OX  85 

has  many  of  the  characteristics  of  his  style,  —  his 
discursiveness,  his  habit  of  leaving  the  direct  track 
of  narrative  on  the  suggestion  of  the  first  inviting 
by-path,  his  comnioiiplaceness  of  invention,  and, 
what  is  even  more  suspicious,  the  same  imperfect 
rhymes,  sometimes  mere  assonances,  which  are 
found  in  verses  admittedly  his  own.  I  find  also, 
or  think  I  find,  unmistakable  (though  veiled)  allu 
sions  to  the  Civil  War  consonant  with  some  that 
Walton  coidd  not  refrain  in  his  acknowledged 
writings.  There  is  almost  nothing  in  it  that  sug 
gests  poetry.  Indeed,  I  remember  but  a  single 
happy  phrase :  — 

"  in  the  proud  deep 

She  and  her  bold  Clearchus  sweetly  sleep 
In  those  soft  beds  of  darkness." 

There  is  another  passage  worth  quoting  as  ap* 
plicable  to  Walton  himself  in  his  old  age :  — 

"  And  he  was  almost  grown  a  child  again, 

Yet  sound  in  judgment,  not  impaired  in  mind, 
For  age  had  rather  the  soul's  parts  refined 
Than  any  way  inSrmed,  his  wit  no  less 
Than  't  was  in  youth,  his  memory  as  fresh ; 
He  failed  in  nothing  but  his  earthly  part 
That  tended  to  its  centre,  yet  his  heart 
Was  still  the  same  and  beat  as  lustily." 

And  in  his  preface  Walton  perfectly  describes  him 
self  in  describing  the  real  or  imaginary  author :  — 

kt  He  was  in  his  time  a  man  generally  known  and  as 
well  beloved  ;  for  he  was  humble  and  obliging  in  his  be 
havior,  a  gentleman,  a  scholar,  very  innocent  and  pru 
dent  ;  and  indeed  his  whole  life  was  useful,  quiet,  and 
virtuous." 


8G  WALTON 

I  am  convinced  that  "Thealma  and  Clearchus," 
whoever  may  have  sketched  it,  is  mainly  Walton's 
as  it  now  stands,  and  I  believe  it  to  be  the  work  of 
his  middle  or  later  life.  The  gap  of  five  years  be 
tween  the  date  of  the  preface  and  that  of  publica 
tion  is  hard  to  explain  if  we  suppose  him  to  have 
been  merely  the  editor.  The  hesitation  of  an  au 
thor  venturing  himself,  even  under  an  alias,  in  a 
new  direction,  seems  a  more  natural  explanation. 
If  he  was  the  author,  I  cannot  agree  with  Arch 
deacon  Nares  and  Sir  Harris  Nicolas  that  the  arti 
fice  was  very  culpable,  or  that  Walton  would  have 
thought  it  so.  The  evidence  internal  and  external 
that  he  was  author  of  the  two  letters  from  "  a  quiet 
and  comfortable  [conformable  ?  ]  citizen  in  London 
to  two  busy  and  factious  shopkeepers  in  Coventry," 
published  in  1680,  and  signed  R.  W.,  seems  to 
me  conclusive.  Had  he  attributed  to  Chalkhill  a 
poem  as  bad  in  its  morals  as  "Thealma  and  Clear 
chus  "  in  its  verse,  it  would  have  been  quite  another 
matter.  Walton  thought  the  poem  good,  or  he 
would  not  have  published  it ;  and  the  worst  harm 
that  could  come  to  Chalkhill  would  be  the  reputa 
tion  of  being  a  bad  poet,  —  not  very  hard  to  bear 
with  so  many  to  keep  him  in  countenance,  and  he 
safe  under  the  sod  for  sixty-eight  years. 

Whether  author  or  editor,  Walton  did  not  live 
long  to  enjoy  the  mystification  or  share  the  sue-1 
cess,  if  any  there  were.  He  wrote  his  own  will  in 
October,  1683 ;  and  on  the  15th  December  of  that 
year,  to  borrow  the  words  of  his  granddaughter's 
epitaph,  written  no  doubt  by  himself,  he  died  in 
the  ninetieth  year  "of  his  innocency." 


WALTON  87 

In  his  will  there  is  this  remarkable  passage: 
"  My  worldly  estate,  which  I  have  nether  got  by 
falsehood  or  flattery,  or  the  extreme  crewelty  of  the 
law  of  this  nation."  This  cruelty,  I  have  no  doubt, 
was  the  power  which  the  law  put  into  the  hands 
of  evil  landlords.  On  this  subject  Walton  held 
opinions  which,  if  put  in  practice,  would  have 
prevented  the  social  miseries  of  Ireland  and  the 
consequent  political  retribution  which  England  is 
compelled  to  suffer  for  them.  This  is  all  the  more 
creditable  to  him  because  he  was  by  temperament 
and  principle  conservative,  and  not  only  a  friend  to 
that  order  of  the  Universe  which  was  by  law  estab 
lished  in  Church  and  State,  but  a  lover  of  it.  He 
tells  of  a  pitiless  landlord  who  was  a  parishioner  of 
Sanderson,  and  of  Sanderson's  successful  dealing 
with  him,  and  adds :  — 

"  It  may  be,  noted  that  in  this  age  there  are  a  sort  of 
people  so  unlike  the  God  of  Mercy,  so  void  of  the  bow 
els  of  pity,  that  they  love  only  themselves  and  children, 
love  them  so  as  not  to  be  concerned  whether  the  rest  of 
mankind  waste  their  days  in  sorrow  and  shame,  —  peo 
ple  that  are  cursed  with  riches  and  a  mistake  that  no 
thing  but  riches  can  make  them  and  theirs  happy." 

The  character  of  Walton's  friendships  and  his 
fidelity  to  them  when  prorogued  by  death  bear  am 
ple  witness  to  the  fine  quality  of  his  nature.  How 
amiably  human  it  was  he  betrays  at  every  turn, 
yet  with  all  his  bo?iho?nie  there  is  a  dignity  which 
never  forgets  itself  or  permits  us  to  forget  it.  We 
may  apply  to  him  what  he  says  of  Sir  Henry 
Wotton's  father:  that  he  was  "a  man  of  great 


88  WALTON 

modesty,  of  a  most  plain  and  single  heart,  of  an 
ancient  freedom  and  integrity  of  mind,"  and  may 
say  of  him,  as  he  says  of  Sir  Henry  himself,  that 
he  had  "a  most  persuasive  behavior."  His  friends 
loved  to  call  him  "honest  Izaak."  He  speaks  of 
his  own  "simplicity  and  harmlessness,"  and  tells 
us  that  his  humor  was  "to  be  free  and  pleasant  and 
civilly  merry,"  and  that  he  "hated  harsh  censures." 
He  makes  it  a  prime  quality  of  the  gentleman  to  be 
"communicable."  He  had  no  love  of  money,  and 
compassionates  those  who  are  "  condemned  to  be 
rich."  He  was  a  staunch  royalist  and  church 
man,  loved  music,  painting,  good  ale,  and  a  pipe, 
and  takes  care  to  tell  us  that  a  certain  artificial 
fly  "  was  made  by  a  handsome  woman  and  with  a 
fine  hand."  But  what  justifies  and  ennobles  these 
lower  loves,  what  gives  him  a  special  and  native 
aroma  like  that  of  Alexander,  is  that  above  all  he 
loved  the  beauty  of  holiness  and  those  ways  of  tak 
ing  and  of  spending  life  that  make  it  wholesome 
for  ourselves  and  our  fellows.  His  view  of  the 
world  is  not  of  the  widest,  but  it  is  the  Delectable 
Mountains  that  bound  the  prospect.  Never  surely 
was  there  a  more  lovable  man,  nor  one  to  whom 
love  found  access  by  more  avenues  of  sympathy. 

There  are  two  books  which  have  a  place  by 
themselves  and  side  by  side  in  our  literature,  — 
Walton's  "Complete  Angler"  and  White's  "Nat 
ural  History  of  Selborne;"  and  they  are  books, 
too,  which  have  secured  immortality  without  show 
ing  any  tincture  of  imagination  or  of  constructive 
faculty,  in  the  gift  of  one  or  the  other  of  which  that 


WALTON  89 

distinction  commonly  lies.  They  neither  stimulate 
thought  nor  stir  any  passionate  emotion.  If  they 
make  us  wiser,  it  is  indirectly  and  without  attempt 
ing  it,  by  making  us  more  cheerful.  The  purely 
literary  charm  of  neither  of  them  will  alone  au 
thorize  the  place  they  hold  so  securely,  though,  as 
respects  the  "Angler,"  this  charm  must  be  taken 
more  largely  into  account.  They  cannot  be  called 
popular,  because  they  attract  only  a  limited  num 
ber  of  readers,  but  that  number  is  kept  full  by  new 
recruits  in  every  generation ;  and  they  have  survived 
every  peril  to  which  editing  could  expose  them, 
even  the  crowning  one  of  illustration.  They  have 
this  in  common,  that  those  who  love  them  find 
themselves  growing  more  and  more  to  love  the  au 
thors  of  them  too.  Theirs  is  an  immortality  of 
affection,  perhaps  the  most  desirable,  as  it  is  the 
rarest,  of  all.  I  do  not  mean  that  there  are  no 
books  in  other  languages,  and  no  other  books  in  our 
own,  that  invite  to  a  similar  intimacy  and  inspire 
the  same  enthusiasm  of  regard.  "Don  Quixote" 
and  "Elia"  appeal  to  the  memory  at  once.  But 
in  both  of  these  there  is  also  the  sorcery  of  genius, 
there  is  the  touch  of  the  master,  as  well  as  the  shy 
personal  attractiveness  of  the  writer.  In  the  two 
books  of  which  I  have  been  speaking,  what  prima 
rily  interests  us  is  the  unconscious  revelation  of  the 
authors'  character;  and  it  is  through  the  kindly 
charm  of  this  and  a  certain  homely  inspiration 
drawn  from  the  sources  of  every-day  experience 
that  they  tighten  their  hold  upon  us.  Nature  had 
endowed  these  men  with  the  simple  skill  to  make 


90  WALTON 

happiness  out  of  the  cheap  material  that  is  within 
the  means  of  the  poorest  of  us.  The  good  fairy 
gave  them  to  weave  cloth  of  gold  out  of  straw. 
They  did  not  waste  their  time  or  strive  to  show 
their  cleverness  in  discussing  whether  life  were 
worth  living,  but  found  every  precious  moment  of 
it  so  without  seeking,  or  made  it  so  without  gri 
mace,  and  with  no  thought  that  they  were  doing 
anything  worth  remark.  Both  these  books  are  pre 
eminently  cheerful  books,  and  have  the  invaluable 
secret  of  distilling  sunshine  out  of  leaden  skies. 
They  are  companionable  books,  that  tempt  us  out- 
of-doors  and  keep  us  there.  The  reader  of  the 
" Angler"  especially  finds  himself  growing  con 
scious  of  one  meaning  in  the  sixth  Beatitude  too 
often  overlooked,  —  that  the  pure  in  heart  shall 
see  God,  not  only  in  some  future  and  far-off  sense, 
but  wherever  they  turn  their  eyes. 

I  have  hesitated  to  say  that  Walton  had  style, 
because,  though  that  quality,  the  handmaid  of  tal 
ent  and  the  helpmeet  of  genius,  have  left  the  un 
obtrusive  traces  of  its  deft  hand  in  certain  choicer 
parts  of  Walton's  writing,  — his  guest-chambers  as 
it  were,  —  yet  it  does  by  no  means  pervade  and  reg 
ulate  the  whole.  For  in  a  book  we  feel  the  influ 
ence  of  style  everywhere,  though  we  never  catch  it 
at  its  work,  as  in  a  house  we  divine  the  neat-handed 
ministry  of  woman.  Walton  too  often  leaves  his 
sentences  in  a  clutter.  But  there  are  other  qualities 
which,  if  they  do  not  satisfy  like  style,  are  yet  even 
more  agreeable,  draw  us  nearer  to  an  author,  and 
make  us  happier  in  him.  Why  try  to  discover 


WALTON  91 

what  the  charm  of  a  book  is,  if  only  it  charm?  If 
I  must  seek  a  word  that  more  than  any  other  ex 
plains  the  pleasure  which  Walton's  way  of  writing 
gives  us,  I  should  say  it  was  its  innoceney.  It  re 
freshes  like  the  society  of  children.  I  do  not  know 
whether  he  had  humor,  but  there  are  passages  that 
suggest  it,  as  where,  after  quoting  Montaigne's  de 
lightful  description  of  how  he  played  with  his  cat, 
he  goes  on :  "  Thus  freely  speaks  Montaigne  con 
cerning  cats,"  as  if  he  had  taken  an  undue  liberty 
with  them ;  or  where  he  makes  a  meteorologist  of 
the  crab,  that  "at  a  certain  age  gets  into  a  dead 
fish's  shell,  and  like  a  hermit  dwells  there  alone 
studying  the  wind  and  weather;  "  or  where  he  tells 
us  of  the  palmer-worm,  that  uhe  will  boldly  and 
disorderly  wander  up  and  down,  and  not  endure 
to  be  kept  to  a  diet  or  fixed  to  a  particular  place." 
And  what  he  says  of  Sanderson  —  that  "he  did 
put  on  some  faint  purposes  to  marry"  —  woidd 
have  arrided  Lamb.  These,  if  he  meant  to  be 
droll,  have  that  seeming  inadvertence  which  gives 
its  highest  zest  to  humor  and  makes  the  eye  twinkle 
with  furtive  connivance.  Walton's  weaknesses, 
too,  must  be  reckoned  among  his  other  attractions. 
He  praises  a  meditative  life,  and  with  evident  sin 
cerity  ;  but  we  feel  that  he  liked  nothing  so  well  as 
good  talk.  His  credulity  leaves  front  and  back 
door  invitingly  open.  For  this  I  rather  praise  than 
censure  him,  since  it  brought  him  the  chance  of  a 
miracle  at  any  odd  moment,  and  this  complacency 
of  belief  was  but  a  lower  form  of  the  same  quality 
of  mind  that  in  more  serious  questions  gave  him  his 


92  WALTON 

equanimity  of  faith.  And  how  persuasively  beau 
tiful  that  equanimity  is !  Heaven  was  always  as 
real  to  him  as  to  us  are  countries  we  have  seen  only 
in  the  map,  and  so  near  that  he  caught  wafts  of  the 
singing  there  when  the  wind  was  in  the  right  quar 
ter.  I  must  not  forget  Walton's  singular  and  gen 
uine  love  of  Nature  and  his  poetical  sympathy  with 
it,  less  common  then  than  now  when  "all  have  got 
the  seed."  This  love  was  not  in  the  Ercles  vein 
such  as  is  now  in  fashion,  but  tender  and  true,  and 
expresses  itself  not  deliberately  but  in  caressing 
ejaculations,  as  where  he  speaks  of  "the  little  liv 
ing  creatures  with  which  the  sun  and  summer  adorn 
and  beautify  the  river-banks  and  meadows  .  .  . 
whose  life,  they  say,  Nature  intended  not  to  exceed 
an  hour,  and  yet  that  life  is  made  shorter  by  other 
flies  or  by  accident."  What  far-reaching  pity  in 
this  concluding  sigh,  and  how  keen  a  sense  of  the 
sweetness  of  life,  too !  In  one  respect,  I  think,  he 
is  peculiar,  —  his  sensitiveness  to  odors.  In  enu 
merating  the  recreations  of  man,  he  reckons  sweet 
smells  among  them.  It  is  Venator  who  says  this, 
to  be  sure;  but  in  the  "Angler  "  there  is  absolutely 
no  dramatic  sense,  and  it  is  always  Walton  who 
speaks.  A  part  of  our  entertainment,  indeed,  is  to 
see  him  doubling  so  many  parts  and  all  the  while 
so  unmistakably  himself. 

Walton  certainly  cannot  be  called  original  in  the 
sense  that  he  opened  new  paths  to  thought  or  new 
vistas  to  imagination.  Such  men  are  rare,  but  al 
most  as  rare  are  those  who  have  force  enough  of 
nature  to  suffuse  whatever  they  write  with  their  own 


WALTON  93 

individuality  and  to  make  a  thought  fresh  again 
and  their  own  by  the  addition  of  this  indefinable 
supplement.  This  constitutes  literary  originality, 
and  this  Walton  had.  Whatever  entered  his  mind 
or  memory  came  forth  again  ^J/MS  Izaak  Walton. 
We  have  borrowed  of  the  Latin  mythology  the 
word  "  genius  "  to  express  certain  intellectual  pow 
ers  or  aptitudes  which  we  are  puzzled  to  define,  so 
elusive  are  they.  I  have  already  admitted  that  this 
term  in  its  ordinary  acceptation  cannot  be  applied 
to  Walton.  This  would  imply  larger  "draughts  of 
intellectual  day  "  than  his  ever  were  or  could  be. 
For  we  ordinarily  confine  it  to  a  single  species  of 
power,  which  seems  sometimes  (as  in  Villon,  Mar 
lowe,  and  Poe)  wholly  dissociated  from  the  rest  of 
the  man,  and  continues  to  haunt  the  ruins  of  him 
with  its  superior  presence  as  if  it  were  rather  a 
genius  loci  than  the  natale  comes  qui  temperat  as- 
trum.  In  Walton's  case,  since  a  Daimoii  or  a 
Genius  would  be  too  lofty  for  the  business,  might 
we  not  take  the  Brownie  of  our  own  Northern  my 
thology  for  the  type  of  such  superior  endowment  as 
he  clearly  had?  We  can  fancy  him  ministered  to  by 
such  a  homely  and  helpful  creature,  —  not  a  genius 
exactly,  but  answering  the  purpose  sufficiently  well, 
and  marking  a  certain  natural  distinction  in  those 
it  singles  out  for  its  innocent  and  sportful  com 
panionship.  And  it  brings  a  blessing  also  to  those 
who  treat  it  kindly,  as  Walton  did. 

Fortunate  senex,  ergo  tua  rura  manebunt. 


MILTON'S   "AKEOPAGITICA." 

1890. 

DURING  the  hurly-burly  of  the  English  Civil 
War,  which  made  the  bee  in  every  man's  bonnet 
buzz  all  the  more  persistently  to  be  let  forth,  who 
ever  would  now  write  to  his  newspaper  was  driven, 
for  want  of  that  safety-valve,  to  indite  a  pamphlet, 
and,  as  he  believed  that  the  fate  of  what  for  the  mo 
ment  was  deemed  the  Universe  hung  on  his  opin 
ion,  was  eager  to  make  it  public  ere  the  opportune 
moment  should  be  gone  by  forever.  Every  one  of 
these  enthusiasts  felt  as  Robert  Owen  did  when 
he  said  to  Wilberforce,  "What,  Sir,  would  you 
put  off  the  happiness  of  Mankind  till  the  next  ses 
sion  of  Parliament?"  Every  crotchet  and  whim- 
sey,  too,  became  the  nucleus  of  a  sect,  and,  as  if 
Old  England  could  not  furnish  enough  otherwise- 
mindedness  of  her  own,  New  England  sent  over 
Rogers  and  Gorton  to  help  in  the  confusion  of 
tongues.  All  these  sects,  since  each  singly  was  in 
a  helpless  and  often  hateful  minority,  were  united 
in  the  assertion  of  their  right  to  freedom  of  opinion 
and  to  the  uncurtailed  utterance  of  whatever  they 
fancied  that  opinion  to  be.  Many  of  them,  it 
should  seem,  could  hardly  fail  in  their  mental  vag 
abondage  to  stumble  upon  the  principle  of  universal 


MILTON'S   AREOPAGITICA  95 

toleration,  but  none  discovered  anything  more 
novel  than  that  Liberty  of  Prophesying  is  good 
for  Me  and  very  bad  for  Thee.  It  is  remarkable 
how  beautiful  the  countenance  of  Toleration  always 
looks  in  this  partial  view  of  it,  but  it  is  conceivable 
that  any  one  of  these  heterodoxies,  once  in  power 
and -therefore  orthodox,  would  have  buckled  round 
all  dissenters  the  strait-waistcoat  yet  warm  from 
the  constraint  of  more  precious  limbs.  Indeed, 
this  inconsistency,  so  concise  a  proof  of  the  consist 
ency  of  human  nature,  was  illustrated  when  the 
General  Court  of  Massachusetts  suppressed  the  first 
attempt  at  a  newspaper  in  1690,  and  forbade  the 
printing  of  anything  "without  licence  first  obtained 
from  those  appointed  by  the  Government  to  grant 
the  same."  Williams,  as  was  natural  in  one  of  his 
amiable  temper,  was  more  generous  than  the  rest, 
but  even  he  lived  long  enough  to  learn  that  there 
were  politico-theological  bores  in  Rhode  Island 
so  sedulous  and  so  irritating  that  they  made  him 
doubt  the  efficacy  of  his  own  nostrum,  just  as  the 
activity  of  certain  domestic  insects  might  make  a 
Brahmin  waver  as  to  the  sacredness  of  life  in  some 
of  its  lower  organisms. 

The  prevailing  Party  had  also  its  jangling  mi 
norities  whose  criticisms  and  arguments  and  com 
plaints  it  was  convenient  to  suppress,  and  ac 
cordingly  Parliament,  in  June,  1643,  passed  an 
Ordinance  to  restrain  unlicensed  printing.  They 
had  so  little  learned  how  to  use  their  ne,wly  acquired 
freedom  as  to  be  certain  that  they  could  compel 
other  men  to  the  right  use  of  theirs.  This  is  not 


96  MILTON'S  AREOPAGITICA 

to  be  wondered  at,  for  even  democracies  are  a  great 
while  in  finding  out  that  everything  may  be  left  to 
the  instincts  of  a  free  people  save  those  instincts 
themselves,  and  that  these,  docile  if  guided  gently, 
grow  mutinous  under  unskilful  driving.  Parlia 
ment  was  trying  no  new  experiment,  for  the  press, 
as  if  it  were  an  animal  likely  to  run  mad  and  bite 
somebody  at  any  moment,  had  been  muzzled  since 
Queen  Mary's  day,  but  they  were  trying  over 
again,  as  men  are  wont,  an  experiment  that  had 
always  failed,  and  in  the  nature  of  things  always 
must  fail. 

Unwise  repression  made  evasion  only  the  more 
actively  ingenious,  and  gave  it  that  color  of  right 
eousness  which  is  the  most  dangerous  consequence 
of  ill-considered  legislation.  Counsel  was  darkened 
by  a  swarm  of  pamphlets  surreptitiously  brooded 
in  cellars  and  cocklofts.  Fancy  sees  their  authors 
fluttering  round  the  New  Light  on  dingy  quarto 
wings  and  learning  that  Truth  incautiously  ap 
proached  can  singe  as  well  as  shine.  Every  doc 
trine  inconceivable  by  instructed  men  was  preached, 
and  the  ghost  of  every  dead  and  buried  heresy  did 
squeak  and  gibber  in  the  London  streets.  The 
right  of  private  misjudgment  had  been  exercised 
so  fantastically  on  the  Scriptures  that  thoughtful 
persons  were  beginning  to  surmise  whether  there 
were  not  enough  explosive  material  between  their 
covers  to  shatter  any  system  of  government  or  of 
society  that  ever  was  or  will  be  contrived  by  man. 
All  this  was  the  natural  result  of  circumstances 
wholly  novel,  of  a  universal  ferment  of  thought  or 


MILTON'S  AREOPAGITICA  97 

of  its  many  plausible  substitutes,  enthusiasm,  fa 
naticism,  monomania,  and  every  form  of  mental 
and  moral  bewilderment  suddenly  loosed  from  the 
unconscious  restraints  of  traditional  order.  Those 
who  watched  the  strange  intellectual  and  ethico- 
political  upheaval  in  New  England  fifty  years  ago 
will  be  at  no  loss  for  parallels  to  these  phenomena. 
It  was  a  state  of  things  that  should  have  been  left 
to  subside,  as  it  had  arisen,  through  natural  causes ; 
but  the  powers  that  be  always  think  themselves 
wiser  than  the  laws  of  Nature  or  the  axioms  of 
experience. 

Two  formalities  were  necessary  for  the  lawful 
publication  of  any  printed  sheet.  These  were  the 
long-established  entry  at^  Stationers'  Hall  and  the 
license  required  by  the  new  Ordinance.  Men  in  a 
hurry  to  save  the  world  before  night,  dissident  as 
they  might  be  in  other  respects,  were  agreed  in  re 
senting  these  impediments  and  delays,  and  this  the 
more,  doubtless,  because  of  the  fees  they  exacted. 
Milton,  who  had  nothing  in  common  with  such  men 
except  the  belief  in  a  divine  mission,  had  in  pub 
lishing  his  controversial  tracts  quietly  ignored  both 
the  rights  of  the  Stationers  and  the  injunctions  of 
the  Ordinance.  As  respects  the  Stationers'  Com 
pany,  he  should  have  complied  with  the  law,  since 
entry  in  their  register  was  the  only  security  for 
copyright,  and  he  believed,  as  he  tells  us  in  his 
" Iconoclastes, "  that  "every  author  should  have 
the  property  in  his  work  reserved  to  him  after 
death  as  well  as  living."  It  was  the  infringement 
of  their  copyrights  by  piratical  printers  during  the 


98  MILTON'S  AREOPAGITICA 

general  confusion,  which  seems  first  to  have  moved 
the  Stationers'  Company  to  protest  against  the  gen 
eral  violation  of  the  laws  controlling  the  press. 
Milton's  tract  on  Divorce,  published,  like  others  of 
his  before,  without  license  or  registry,  had  made  a 
scandal  even  among  those  who  regarded  a  breach 
of  the  Seventh  Commandment  as  the  only  effective 
liniment  for  the  sprains  and  bruises  of  matrimony. 
And  indeed  Milton  had  ventured  very  far  in  that 
dangerous  direction  where  liberty  is  apt  to  shade 
imperceptibly  into  the  warmer  hues  of  license, 
though  not  so  cynically  far  as  Lady  Mary  Wortley 
Montagu  afterwards  went  in  her  proposed  septen 
nial  rearrangement.  The  Stationers  seized  the  op 
portunity  to  denounce  him  twice  by  name,  first  to 
a  committee  of  the  Commons,  and  then  to  a  com 
mittee  of  the  Lords.  Nothing  seems  to  have  come 
of  their  complaints,  and  indeed  the  attention  of 
both  houses  must  have  been  too  much  absorbed  by 
more  serious  warfare  to  find  time  for  engaging  in 
this  Battle  of  the  Books.  Nothing  came  of  them, 
that  is  to  say,  on  the  part  of  Parliament,  but  on 
Milton's  came  the  "  Areopagitica. " 

We  are  indebted  to  the  painstaking  and  fruitful 
researches  of  Mr.  Masson  for  a  more  precise  know 
ledge  of  the  particulars  which  bring  this  tract  into 
closer  and  clearer  relations  with  the  personal  in 
terests  of  Milt6n,  and  some  such  nearer  concern 
was  always  needed  as  a  motive  to  give  his  prose, 
in  which,  as  he  says,  he  worked  only  with  his  left 
hand,  its  fullest  energy  and  vivacity.  Nor  is  this 
the  case  with  his  prose  only.  It  is  true  also  of  his 


MILTON'S  AREOPAGITICA  99 

verse  in  those  passages  which  are  the  most  charac 
teristically  his  own.  Perhaps  he  himself  was  dimly 
conscious  of  this,  for  in  his  "Doctrine  and  Disci 
pline  of  Divorce  "  he  says  that  "when  points  of  dif 
ficulty  are  to  be  discussed,  appertaining  to  the  re 
moval  of  unreasonable  wrong  and  burthen  from  the 
perplexed  life  of  our  brothers,  it  is  incredible  how 
cold,  how  dull,  and  how  far  from  all  fellow-feeling 
we  are  without  the  spur  of  self -concernment."  In 
the  "Areopagitica,"  he  was  not  only  advocating 
certain  general  principles,  but  pleading  his  own 
cause.  The  largeness  of  the  theme  absolves  the 
egotism  of  the  motive,  while  this  again  adds  fervor 
to  the  argument  and  penetration  to  the  voice  of  the 
advocate.  The  "Areopagitica"  is  the  best  known 
and  most  generally  liked  of  Milton's  prose  writings, 
because  it  is  the  only  one  concerning  whose  subject 
the  world  has  more  nearly  come  to  an  agreement. 
In  all  the  others  except  the  tract  concerning  Educa 
tion,  and  the  "History  of  Britain  "  in  its  first  edi 
tion,  there  are  embers  of  controversy  which  the 
ashes  of  two  centuries  cover  but  have  not  cooled. 

There  is  a  passage  in  his  "Second  Defence" 
where  Milton  speaks  of  the  "Areopagitica"  as  one 
section  of  a  tripartite  scheme  which  he  had  thought 
out  "to  the  promotion  of  real  and  substantial  lib 
erty."  After  giving  a  list  of  his  writings  on  mat 
ters  ecclesiastic,  he  says,  "When,  therefore,  I 
perceived  that  there  were  three  species  of  liberty 
without  which  scarcely  any  life  can  be  completely 
led,  religious,  domestic  or  private,  and  civil,  as  I 
had  already  written  concerning  the  first,  and  the 


100  MILTON'S  AREOPAG1TICA 

magistrates  were  strenuously  active  concerning  the 
third,  I  took  to  myself  the  second  or  domestic. 
And,  as  this  seemed  tripartite,  if  marriage,  if  the 
education  of  children  were  to  be  as  they  should,  if 
there  should  be  liberty  of  philosophizing,  I  set  forth 
my  opinion  not  only  concerning  the  rightful  con 
tracting  of  marriage,  but  also  the  dissolving  thereof, 
if  it  should  be  necessary.  ...  I  then  treated  more 
briefly  of  the  education  of  children  in  a  single 
small  work.  .  .  .  And  lastly  concerning  the  freeing 
of  the  press,  lest  the  judgment  of  true  and  false, 
of  what  should  be  published,  what  suppressed, 
should  be  in  the  power  of  a  few  men  of  little  learn 
ing  and  of  vulgar  judgment,  ...  I  wrote  in  the 
proper  style  of  an  oration  the  'Areopagitica.' ' 

The  sub-title  of  this  work  accordingly  is  "a 
speech  for  the  liberty  of  unlicenced  printing,"  but 
it  is  much  more  than  this.  It  is  a  plea  in  behalf 
of  freedom  of  research  in  all  directions  (libertas  pld- 
losophandi),  and  there  is  in  it  implicitly  the  doc 
trine  of  universal  toleration.  But  Milton's  inten 
tion  had  no  such  scope  as  that,  for  it  is  plain  from 
what  he  says  elsewhere  that  he  would  have  drawn 
the  line  on  this  side  of  Popery,  of  atheism,  and 
most  probably  of  whatever  was  immediately  incon 
venient  to  so  firm  a  believer  as  he  was  in  the  infal 
libility  of  John  Milton.  Such  was  the  irony  of 
Fate  that  he  himself  a  few  years  later  became  a 
censor  of  the  press.  It  was  perhaps  with  an  eye  to 
this  comic  property  of  the  whirligig  of  Time  that 
he  wrote  the  passage  just  quoted  from  the  "Second 
Defence,"  in  which  it  is  implied  that  some  things 


MILTON'S  AREOPAGJTJCA    : 

should  be  suppressed.  But  Milton  was  not  iricon- 
sistent  with  himself,  however  he  might  be  so  with 
the  principles  advocated  in  the  "Areopagitica,"  as 
those  who  have  studied  his  character  know.  He 
is  never  weary  of  insisting  on  the  Tacitean  distinc 
tion  between  liberty  and  license,  and  in  his  "His 
tory  of  Britain  "  says  admirably  well  "that  liberty 
hath  a  sharp  and  double  edge  fit  only  to  be  handled 
by  just  and  virtuous  men :  to  bad  and  dissolute  it 
becomes  a  mischief  unwieldy  in  their  own  hands." 
And  if  consistency  be  a  jewel,  as  the  proverb  af 
firms,  yet  it  can  only  show  its  best  lustre  in  a  suit 
able  setting  of  circumstances.  Milton  was  always 
a  champion  of  freedom  as  he  understood  it,  a  free 
dom  "not  to  be  won  from  without,  but  from  within, 
in  the  right  conduct  and  administration  of  life." 
Toland  speaks  of  him  as  favoring  "the  erection  of 
a  perfect  Democracy,"  but  in  truth  110  man  was 
ever  farther  from  being  a  democrat  in  the  modern 
sense  than  he.  The  government  that  he  preferred 
would  have  been  that  of  a  Council  chosen  by  a 
strictly  limited  body  of  constituents  and  this  indi 
rectly,  their  function  being  only  to  choose  electors 
who  again  should  make  choice  of  a  smaller  body, 
and  so  on  through  "a  third  or  fourth  sifting  and 
refining  of  exactest  choice."  His  scheme  aimed 
at  the  establishment  of  something  like  a  Vene 
tian  Kepublic  without  a  Doge,  his  experience  of 
Cromwell  apparently  having  made  any  monoc ratio 
devices  distasteful  to  him.  For  the  "rude  multi 
tude,"  as  he  calls  it,  he  had  an  unqualified  con 
tempt,  and  had  no  more  belief  in  the  divine  right 


102  ;  MILTON'S  AREOPAGITICA 

of  majorities  'than0  in  that  of  tyrants.  Undoubt 
edly  when  a  man  of  Milton's  temperament  advo 
cated  free  speech  it  was  with  the  unconscious  men 
tal  reservation  that  it  should  be  on  the  right  side, 
or,  at  any  rate,  that  it  should  be  speech  and  not 
jargon. 

There  is  no  trustworthy  evidence  that  the  "Are- 
opagitica"  produced  any  immediate  effect,  unless  it 
may  have  been  indirectly  by  leavening  some  small 
fraction  of  the  sluggish  lump  of  what  we  should 
now  call  public  opinion.  Interests  more  immediate 
and  pressing  must  soon  have  crowded  it  out  of 
mind,  and  in  a  few  years  the  returning  flood  of 
royalism  covered  it,  with  the  other  prose  works  of 
Milton,  in  a  deepening  ooze  of  oblivion.  So 
utterly  must  it  have  been  forgotten  that  in  1693 
Charles  Blount  boldly  plagiarized  it  under  the  new 
title  of  "  A  Just  Vindication  of  Learning  and  the 
Liberty  of  the  Press  by  Philopatris,"  in  which  he 
had  the  impudence  to  quote  a  passage  from  the 
very  book  he  was  rifling  with  the  condescending 
remark  "Herein  I  agree  with  Mr.  Milton,"  as  if 
it  were  an  exception  to  his  general  way  of  thinking. 
Whether  the  tract  in  this  vulgarized  form  helped 
forward  the  cause  in  behalf  of  which  it  was  written 
is  matter  of  conjecture.  None  of  Blount's  pam 
phlets  could  have  had  any  considerable  vent,  for 
when  Gildon  published  "  The  Miscellaneous  Works 
of  Charles  Blount,  Esq.,"  it  is  evident  that  he 
merely  bound  together  the  several  pieces  which 
made  up  the  volume,  putting  new  title-pages  to  all 
save  one  of  them,  but  leaving  the  old  pagination  of 


MILTON'S  AREOPAGITICA  103 

each.  There  must  therefore  have  been  enough  un 
sold  copies  to  serve  the  needs  of  this  edition.  Be 
this  as  it  may,  Blount,  by  means  of  a  scurvy  trick 
played  on  the  licenser,  Bohun, —  a  trick  one  is  half 
inclined  to  forgive  because  of  its  genuine  humor  and 
its  beneficent  results,  —  was  the  immediate  cause 
of  events  which  led  to  the  final  abandonment  of  the 
licensing  system.  A  full  account  of  the  affair  may 
be  found  in  Macaulay's  History,  where  the  facts 
were  for  the  first  time  unearthed.  Macaulay,  as 
is  his  wont  in  dealing  with  men  whom  he  dislikes, 
blackens  the  character  of  Blount  more  than  it  de 
serves,  and  underrates  his  ability.  He  was  not  an 
atheist,  though,  for  the  point  of  the  historian's  an 
tithesis,  he  ought  to  have  been,  and  he  certainly  had 
more  than  the  talents  of  a  third-rate  pamphleteer. 
He  did  not  live  to  see  the  triumph  of  his  cause. 
It  woidd  be  pleasant  to  associate  Milton  even  indi 
rectly  with  that  triumph,  as  we  might  if  we  could 
suppose  that  the  "  Areopagitica  "  had  first  awakened 
Blount's  interest  in  the  freedom  of  the  press.  But 
in  point  of  fact  his  quarrel  with  the  licensers  was 
an  old  one,  and  he  merely  picked  up  Milton's  tract 
as  he  would  a  handy  stone  to  throw  at  the  dog  he 
was  pelting.  After  an  interval  of  forty  years  the 
"Areopagitica"  was  reprinted  with  a  preface  by 
Thomson  the  poet,  when  it  was  proposed  once  more 
to  put  a  bridle  on  the  press. 

It  cannot  be  said  that  the  prose  works  of  Milton 
have  ever  been  in  any  sense  popular,  or  read  by 
any  public  much  more  numerous  than  the  proof 
reader.  So  far  as  they  are  concerned,  Milton  has 


104  MILTON'S  AREOPAGITICA 

had  his  wish  and  his  audience  has  only  been  too 
few,  whether  fit  or  not.  They  do  not  appear  to 
have  tempted  even  the  omnivorous  Coleridge  in  his 
maturer  years,  though  traces  of  their  influence  may 
be  surmised  in  his  earlier  prose.  It  is  curious  that 
no  notes  upon  them  are  to  be  found  in  his  "Liter 
ary  Remains,"  and  but  a  single  brief  remark  in 
his  "Table-talk,"  to  the  effect  that  Milton's  style 
was  better  in  Latin  than  in  English.  I  find  no 
evident  signs  of  contagion  from  them  in  any  great 
writers  of  English  except  Burke,  who  has  caught 
both  their  qualities  and  their  defects,  unless,  in 
deed,  the  likeness  spring  from  their  both  having 
modelled  themselves  on  Cicero.  Since  1698,  when 
Toland  published  the  first  edition  of  them  in  Hol 
land,  they  have  been  only  four  times  reprinted. 
Nor  is  this  want  of  interest  to  be  explained  by  the 
fact  that  their  matter  is  mainly  contentious  and 
polemical,  for  they  discuss  questions  whose  roots 
strike  deeply  into  the  bedrock  of  politics  and  mor 
als,  and  where  they  find  a  crevice  widen  it  into 
an  irreconcilable  cleavage  of  opinion.  The  reason 
must  be  sought,  then,  not  so  much  in  their  sub 
stance  as  in  their  method  and  manner.  They  are 
indeed  for  the  most  part  the  impassioned  harangues 
of  a  supremely  eloquent  man,  full  of  matter,  but 
careless  of  the  form  in  which  he  utters  it;  rich  in 
learning,  but  too  intent  on  the  constant  display  of 
it  with  the  cumbrous  prodigality  of  one  to  whom 
such  wealth  is  new.  He  had  no  doubt  a  manner 
of  his  own,  and  boasts  that  by  means  of  it  the  au 
thorship  of  his  treatise  on  Divorce  was  detected 


MILTON'S  AREOPAGITfCA  105 

when  printed  anonymously.  And  in  his  "Reason 
of  Church-government  urged  against  Prelaty "  he 
says,  "  Whether  aught  was  imposed  me  by  them 
that  had  the  overlooking,  or  betaken  to  of  mine 
own  choice  in  English  or  other  tongue,  prosing  or 
versing,  but  chiefly  by  this  latter,  the  style,  by 
certain  vital  signs  it  had,  was  likely  to  live." 
Time  has  proved  this  to  be  true  of  his  verse,  but 
not  so  of  his  prose.  For  in  truth  his  prose  has 
no  style  in  the  higher  sense,  as,  for  instance,  the 
"Religio  Medici"  has.  There  are  passages,  to  be 
sure,  which  for  richness  of  texture,  harmony  of 
tone,  and  artistic  distribution  of  parts,  can  hardly 
be  matched  in  our  language,  but  that  equable  dis 
tinction  which  is  the  constant  note  of  his  verse  is 
wanting.  A  sentence  builded  majestically  with 
every  help  of  art  and  imagination  too  often  thrusts 
heavenward  from  a  huddle  of  vulgar  pentices  such 
as  used  to  cluster  about  mediaeval  cathedrals. 
Never  was  such  inequality.  It  is  as  if  some  tran 
scendent  voice  in  mid  soar  of  the  Kyrie  Eleison 
should  drop  into  a  comic  song.  His  sentences  are 
often  loutish  and  difficult,  in  controversy  he  is 
brutal,  and  at  any  the  most  inopportune  moment 
capable  of  an  incredible  coarseness.  Let  a  single 
instance  from  his  "Reformation  in  England"  suf 
fice,  where  he  speaks  of  "that  queasy  temper  of 
lukewarmness  that  gives  a  vomit  to  God  himself." 
Jeremy  Taylor  is  often  coarse,  but  never  to  the 
degree  of  disgust.  Strangely  enough,  too,  Milton 
is  careless  of  euphony,  seeming  to  prefer  words  not 
only  low  but  harsh,  and  such  cacophonous  superla- 


106  MILTON'S  AREOPAGITICA 

tives  as  "virtuousest,"  "viciousest,"  "sheepishest," 
even  making  the  last  two  hiss  in  the  same  sentence. 
Perhaps  he  is  at  his  worst  when  he  fancies  that  he 
is  being  playful  and  humorous  (dangerous  tight 
ropes  for  an  insupportable  foot  like  his),  and,  as 
he  says  in  his  "Animadversions  upon  the  Remon 
strant's  Defence,"  "mixes  here  and  there  a  grim 
laughter  such  as  may  appear  at  the  same  time  in 
an  austere  visage."  Grim  laughter  it  is  indeed. 
Too  often  also  he  blusters,  and  we  are  forced  to 
condone  in  him,  as  he  in  Luther,  "how  far  he  gave 
way  to  his  own  fervent  mind."  It  does  not  satisfy 
us  to  excuse  these  faults  as  common  to  the  time, 
for  Milton  himself  has  taught  us  to  expect  of  him 
that  choice  of  language  and  that  faultless  marshal 
ling  of  it  which  is  of  all  time,  and  sometimes  even 
in  his  prose  there  are  periods  which  have  all  the 
splendor,  all  the  dignity,  and  all  the  grave  exhila 
ration  of  his  verse.  Some  virtue  of  his  singing- 
robes  seems  left,  as  if  they  had  not  long  been 
doffed. 

As  a  master  of  harmony  and  of  easily -maintained 
elevation  in  English  blank  verse  Milton  has  no 
rival.  He  was  skilled  in  many  tongues  and  many 
literatures ;  he  had  weighed  the  value  of  words, 
whether  for  sound  or  sense,  or  where  the  two  may 
be  of  mutual  help.  He  surely,  if  any,  was  what 
he  calls  "a  mint-master  of  language."  He  must 
have  known,  if  any  ever  knew,  that  even  in  the 
"sermo  pedestris  "  there  are  yet  great  differences 
in  gait,  that  prose  is  governed  by  laws  of  modula 
tion  as  exact  if  not  so  exacting  as  those  of  verse, 


MILTON'S  AREOPAGITICA  107 

and  that  it  may  conjure  with  words  as  prevailingly. 
The  music  is  secreted  in  it,  yet  often  more  potent 
in  suggestion  than  that  of  any  verse  which  is  not 
of  utmost  mastery.  We  hearken  after  it  as  to  a 
choir  in  the  side  chapel  of  some  cathedral  heard 
faintly  and  fitfully  across  the  long  desert  of  the 
nave,  now  pursuing  and  overtaking  the  cadences, 
only  to  have  them  grow  doubtful  again  and  elude 
the  ear  before  it  has  ceased  to  throb  with  them. 
A  prose  sentence,  then,  only  fulfils  its  entire  func 
tion  when,  as  in  some  passages  of  the  English  ver 
sion  of  the  Old  Testament,  its  rhythm  so  keeps 
time  and  tune  with  the  thought  or  feeling  that  the 
reader  is  guided  to  the  accentuation  of  the  writer 
as  securely  as  if  in  listening  to  his  very  voice. 
The  fifth  chapter  of  the  Book  of  Judges  is  crowded 
with  these  triumphs  of  well-measured  words.  Axe 
we  not  made  to  see  as  with  our  eyes  the  slow  col 
lapse  of  Sisera's  body,  as  life  and  will  forsake  it, 
and  then  to  hear  his  sudden  fall  at  last  in  the  dull 
thud  of  "he  fell  down  dead,"  where  every  word 
sinks  lower  and  lower,  to  stop  short  with  the  last? 
There  are  many  noble  periods  in  Milton's  prose, 
and  they  are  noble  in  a  way  where  he  is  without 
competitors,  for  surely  he  is  the  most  eloquent  of 
Eno-lishnien.  But  there  are  a  half-dozen  men 

O 

either  his  contemporaries,  or  nearly  so,  whose  prose 
is  far  more  evenly  good  than  his  and  above  all 
moves  with  a  practised  ease  in  which  his  is  wholly 
wanting.  He  prevails  even  with  the  ear  less  often 
than  Browne,  and  almost  never  stirs  the  imagina 
tion  through  the  ear  as  Browne  has  the  art  to  do. 


108  MILTON'S  AREOPAGITICA 

He  is  too  eagerly  intent  on  his  argument  to  lin 
ger  over  the  artifices  by  which  it  might  be  more 
winningly  set  forth.  He  has  been  taxed  with  Lat- 
inism,  and  oddly  enough  by  Doctor  Johnson,  who 
I  feel  sure  could  not  have  read  any  one  of  his 
tracts,  unless  it  were  the  "Areopagitica,"  for  very 
wrath.  He  has,  it  is  true,  some  Latin  construc 
tions  and  uses  a  few  words  (like  "assert,"  "pre 
varicator,"  "disoblige")  in  their  radical  rather 
than  in  their  derivative  meaning,  but  on  the  whole 
his  language  is  less  vitiated  with  verbs  taken  di 
rectly  from  the  Latin  than  that  of  most  of  the 
writers  coeval  with  him.  The  much  overrated 
Feltham,  for  instance,  "formicates"  with  them,  as 
he  would  have  called4  it,  and  one  might  almost  learn 
Latin  by  reading  the  "Vulgar  Errors."  It  is 
Milton's  English  words  rather  that  seem  foreign 
to  us,  such  as  "disgospel,"  "disworship,"  "disal- 
leige,"  "lossless,"  "natureless,"  or  "underfoot  " 
and  "lifeblood"  used  as  adjectives.  Sometimes 
he  ventures  on  what  would  now  be  called  an  Ameri 
canism,  as  where  he  tells  us  of  a  "loud  stench." 
But  the  most  obvious  defect  of  his  prose  is,  as  I 
have  hinted,  its  want  of  equanimity. 

He  is  not  so  truly  a  writer  of  great  prose  as  a 
great  man  writing  in  prose,  and  it  is  really  Milton 
that  we  seek  there  more  than  anything  else.  He 
is  great  enough  when  we  find  him  to  repay  a  thou 
sand-fold  what  the  search  may  have  cost  us.  And 
when  we  meet  him  at  his  best,  there  is*  something 
in  his  commerce  that  fortifies  the  mind  as  only 
contact  with  a  great  character  can.  He  is  then  a 


MILTON'S  AREOPAGITICA  109 

perpetual  fountain  of  highmindedness.  In  contest 
with  an  adversary  he  is  brutally  willing  to  strike 
below  the  belt,  and  shows  as  little  magnanimity  or 
fairness  as  the  average  editor  of  an  American  news 
paper  in  dealing  with  a  political  opponent.  Even 
Voltaire,  hardened  as  were  his  own  controversial 
nerves,  was  shocked  by  the  nature  of  the  weapons 
which  Milton  was  eager  to  employ  against  Morus. 
But  when  he  recovers  possession  of  his  true  self,  he 
is  so  at  home  among  those  things  that  endure,  so 
amply  conversant  with  whatever  is  of  good  report, 
so  intimately  conscious  of  a  divine  presence  in  a 
world  of  doubt  and  failure  and  disillusion,  and  of 
those  spiritual  ministrations  symbolized  by  the 
prophet  in  the  wilderness,  that  we  listen  to  him  as 
Adam  to  the  angel,  and  the  voice  lingers  not  only 
in  the  ear  but  in  the  life.  Mr.  James  Grant  in 
his  "Newspaper  Press"  says,  drolly  enough,  of 
Coleridge,  that  "there  was  to  the  latest  hour  of  his 
life  a  tendency,  which  could  not  be  sufficiently  de 
plored,  to  soar  into  regions  of  unrevealed  truth." 
It  is  this  lift  in  Milton,  rare  enough  among  men, 
this  undying  instinct  to  soar  and  tempt  us  to  venture 
our  weaker  wing,  that  gives  an  incomparable  effi 
cacy  to  those  parts  of  his  writing  in  prose  that  are 
best  inspired.  Here  we  breathe  a  mountain  air 
in  which,  as  Rousseau  says,  "  a  mesure  qu'on  ap- 
proche  des  regions  etherees  Fame  contracte  quelque 
chose  de  leur  inalterable  purete."  Nay,  even  while 
we  are  trudging  wearily  over  the  low  and  marish 
stretches  of  his  discourse,  there  rises  suddenly  from 
before  our  feet  a  winged  phrase  that  mounts  and 


110  MILTON'S  AREOPAGITICA 

carols  like  a  lark,  luring  the  mind  with  it  to  ampler 
spaces  and  a  serener  atmosphere.  It  is  no  small 
education  for  the  nobler  part  of  us  to  consort  with 
one  of  such  temper  that  he  could  say  of  himself 
with  truth,  "God  intended  to  prove  me,  whether 
I  durst  take  up  alone  a  rightful  cause  against  a 
world  of  disesteem,  and  found  I  durst."  And  it 
is  the  breath  of  this  spirit  that  pours  through  the 
"  Areopagitica "  as  through  a  trumpet,  sounding 
the  charge  against  whatever  is  base  and  recreant, 
whether  in  the  world  about  us  or  in  the  ambush  of 
our  own  natures. 


SHAKESPEAKE'S    "RICHARD  III." 

AN    ADDRESS    READ   BEFORE    THE    EDINBURGH    PHILOSOPHI 
CAL  INSTITUTION. 

1883. 
AFTER    a    general    introduction,    Mr.    Lowell 


I  propose  to  say  a  few  words  on  one  of  the  plays 
usually  attributed  to  Shakespeare,  —  a  play  in  re 
spect  of  which  I  find  myself  in  the  position  of  Peter 
Bell,  seeing  little  more  than  an  ordinary  primrose 
where  I  ought,  perhaps,  to  see  the  plant  and  flower 
of  light;  I  mean  the  play  of  "Richard  III."  Hor 
ace  Walpole  wrote  "Historic  Doubts "  concerning 
the  monarch  himself,  and  I  shall  take  leave  to 
express  some  about  the  authorship  of  the  drama 
that  bears  his  name.  I  have  no  intention  of  apply 
ing  to  it  a  system  of  subjective  criticism  which  I 
consider  as  untrustworthy  as  it  is  fascinating,  and 
which  I  think  has  often  been  carried  beyond  its  le 
gitimate  limits.  But  I  believe  it  absolutely  safe  to 
say  of  Shakespeare  that  he  never  wrote  deliberate 
nonsense,  nor  was  knowingly  guilty  of  defective  me 
tre  ;  yet  even  tests  like  these  I  would  apply  with 
commendable  modesty  and  hesitating  reserve,  con 
scious  that  the  meaning  of  words,  and  still  more 


112          SHAKESPEARE'S  RICHARD  III. 

the  associations  they  call  up,  have  changed  since 
Shakespeare's  clay;  that  the  accentuation  of  some 
was  variable,  and  that  Shakespeare's  ear  may  very 
likely  have  been  as  delicate  as  his  other  senses.  On 
the  latter  point,  however,  I  may  say  in  passing,  of 
his  versification,  which  is  often  used  as  a  test  for 
the  period  of  his  plays,  that  Coleridge,  whose  sense 
of  harmony  and  melody  was  perhaps  finer  than  that 
of  any  other  modern  poet,  did  not  allow  his  own 
dramatic  verse  the  same  licenses,  and  I  might  al 
most  say  the  same  mystifications,  which  he  esteems 
applicable  in  regulating  or  interpreting  that  of 
Shakespeare.  This  is  certainly  remarkable.  For 
my  own  part,  I  am  convinced  that  if  we  had  Shake 
speare's  plays  as  he  wrote  them,  —  and  not  as  they 
have  come  down  to  us,  deformed  by  the  careless 
hurry  of  the  copiers-out  of  parts,  by  the  emenda 
tions  of  incompetent  actors,  and  the  mishearings  of 
shorthand  writers, —  I  am  convinced  that  we  should 
not  find  from  one  end  of  them  to  the  other  a  dem- 
onstrably  faulty  verse  or  a  passage  obscure  for  any 
other  reason  than  depth  of  thought  or  supersubtlety 
of  phrase. 

I  know  that  in  saying  this  I  am  laying  myself 
open  to  the  reproach  of  applying  common  sense  to 
a  subject  which  of  all  others  demands  uncommon 
sense  for  its  adequate  treatment,  —  demands  per 
ception  as  sensitive  and  divination  as  infallible  as 
the  operations  of  that  creative  force  they  attempt 
to  measure  are  illusive  and  seemingly  abnormal. 
But  in  attempting  to  answer  a  question  like  that  I 
have  suggested,  I  should  be  guided  by  considera- 


SHAKESPEARE'S  RICHARD  III.          113 

tions  far  less  narrow.  We  cannot  identify  printed 
thoughts  by  the  same  minute  comparisons  that 
would  serve  to  convict  the  handwriting  of  them. 
To  smell  the  rose  is  surely  quite  otherwise  convin 
cing  than  to  number  its  petals ;  and  in  estimating 
that  sum  of  qualities  which  we  call  character,  we 
trust  far  more  to  general  than  to  particular  impres 
sions.  In  guessing  at  the  authorship  of  an  anony 
mous  book,  like  Southey's  "Doctor"  or  Bulwer's 
uTirnon,"  while  I  might  lay  some  stress  on  tricks 
of  manner,  I  should  be  much  less  influenced  by  the 
fact  that  many  passages  were  above  or  below  the 
ordinary  level  of  any  author  whom  I  suspected  of 
writing  it  than  by  the  fact  that  there  was  a  single 
passage  different  in  kind  from  his  habitual  tone. 
A  man  may  surpass  himself  or  fall  short  of  him 
self,  but  he  cannot  change  his  nature.  I  would  not 
be  understood  to  mean  that  common  sense  is  always 
or  universally  applicable  in  criticism,  —  Dr.  John 
son's  treatment  of  "Lycidas"  were  a  convincing 
instance  to  the  contrary;  but  I  confess  I  find  often 
more  satisfactory  guidance  in  the  illuminated  and 
illuminating  common  sense  of  a  critic  like  Lessing, 
making  sure  of  one  landmark  before  he  moved  for 
ward  to  the  next,  than  in  the  metaphysical  dark 
lanterns  which  some  of  his  successors  are  in  the 
habit  of  letting  down  into  their  own  consciousness 
by  way  of  enlightening  ours.  Certainly  common 
sense  will  never  suffice  for  the  understanding  or 
enjoyment  of  "those  brave  translunary  things  that 
the  first  poets  had:  "  but  it  is  at  least  a  remarkably 
good  prophylactic  against  mistaking  a  handsaw  for 
a  hawk. 


114          SHAKESPEARE'S  RICHARD  III. 

What,  then,  is  the  nature  of  the  general  consid 
erations  which  I  think  we  ought  to  bear  in  mind 
in  debating  a  question  like  this,  —  the  authenticity 
of  one  of  Shakespeare's  plays?  First  of  all,  and 
last  of  all,  I  should  put  style ;  not  style  in  its  nar 
row  sense  of  mere  verbal  expression,  for  that  may 
change  and  does  change  with  the  growth  and  train 
ing  of  the  man,  but  in  the  sense  of  that  something, 
more  or  less  clearly  definable,  which  is  always  and 
everywhere  peculiar  to  the  man,  and  either  in  kind 
or  degree  distinguishes  him  from  all  other  men,  — 
the  kind  of  evidence  which,  for  example,  makes  us 
sure  that  Swift  wrote  "The  Tale  of  a  Tub"  and 
Scott  the  "Antiquary,"  because  nobody  else  could 
have  done  it.  Incessu  patuit  dea,  and  there  is  a 
kind  of  gait  which  marks  the  mind  as  well  as  the 
body.  But  even  if  we  took  the  word  "style  "  in  that 
narrower  sense  which  would  confine  it  to  diction  and 
turn  of  phrase,  Shakespeare  is  equally  incompar 
able.  Coleridge,  evidently  using  the  word  in  this 
sense,  tells  us:  "There  's  such  divinity  doth  hedge 
our  Shakespeare  round  that  we  cannot  even  imitate 
his  style.  I  tried  to  imitate  his  manner  in  the 
'  Remorse, '  and  when  I  had  done,  I  found  I  had 
been  tracking  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  and  Massin- 
ger  instead.  It  is  really  very  curious."  Greene, 
in  a  well-known  passage,  seems  to  have  accused 
Shakespeare  of  plagiarism,  and  there  are  verses, 
sometimes  even  a  succession  of  verses  of  Greene 
himself,  of  Peele,  and  especially  of  Marlowe, 
which  are  comparable,  so  far  as  externals  go,  with 
Shakespeare's  own.  Nor  is  this  to  be  wondered  at 


SHAKESPEARE'S  RICHARD  III.          115 

in  men  so  nearly  contemporary.  In  fact,  I  think 
it  is  evident  that  to  a  certain  extent  the  two  mas 
ters  of  versification  who  trained  Shakespeare  wero 
Spenser  and  Marlowe.  Some  of  Marlowe's  verses 
have  the  same  trick  of  clinging  in  the  ear  as 
Shakespeare's.  There  is,  for  instance,  that  fa 
mous  description  of  Helen,  or  rather  the  exclama 
tion  of  Faust  when  he  first  sees  Helen :  — 

"  Was  this  the  face  that  launched  a  thousand  ships 
And  burned  the  topless  towers  of  Ilium  ?  " 

one  verse  of  which,  if  I  am  not  mistaken,  lingered 
in  Shakespeare's  ear.  But  the  most  characteristic 
phrases  of  Shakespeare  imbed  themselves  in  the 
very  substance  of  the  mind,  and  quiver,  years  after, 
in  the  memory  like  arrows  that  have  just  struck  and 
still  feel  the  impulse  of  the  bow.  And  no  whole 
scene  of  Shakespeare,  even  in  his  'prentice  days, 
coidd  be  mistaken  for  the  work  of  any  other  man; 
for  give  him  room  enough,  and  he  is  sure  to  betray 
himself  by  some  quality  which  either  is  his  alone, 
or  his  in  such  measure  as  none  shared  but  he. 

I  am  reminded  of  a  remark  of  Professor  Masson's 
which  struck  me  a  good  deal,  —  that  one  day,  when 
tired  with  overwork,  he  took  up  Dame,  and  after 
reading  in  it  for  half  an  hour  or  so,  he  shut  the 
book  and  found  himself  saying  to  himself,  "  Well, 
this  is  literature  !  "  And  I  think  that  this  may 
be  applied  constantly  to  the  mature  Shakespeare, 
and,  in  a  great  measure,  to  the  young  Shakespeare. 
Take  a  whole  scene  together,  and  there  are  sure  to 
be  passages  in  it  cf  which  we  can  say  that  they  are 
really  literature  in  that  higher  meaning  of  the  word. 


116          SHAKESPEARE'S  RICHARD  III. 

It  is  usual  to  divide  the  works  of  Shakespeare  by 
periods,  but  it  is  not  easy  to  do  this  with  even  an 
approach  to  precision  unless  we  take  the  higher 
qualities  of  structure  as  a  guide.  As  he  matured, 
his  plays  became  more  and  more  organisms,  and 
less  and  less  mere  successions  of  juxtaposed  scenes, 
strung  together  on  the  thread  of  the  plot.  In  as 
signing  periods  too  positively,  I  fancy  we  are  apt  to 
be  misled  a  little  by  the  imperfect  analogy  of  the 
sister  art  of  painting,  and  by  the  first  and  second 
manners,  as  they  are  called,  of  its  great  masters. 
But  manual  dexterity  is  a  thing  of  far  slower  ac 
quisition  than  mastery  of  language  or  the  knack  of 
melodious  versification.  The  fancy  of  young  poets 
is  apt  to  be  superabundant.  It  is  the  imagination 
that  ripens  with  the  judgment,  and  asserts  itself  as 
the  shaping  power  in  a  deeper  sense  than  belongs 
to  it  as  a  mere  maker  of  pictures  when  the  eyes  are 
shut.  Young  poets,  especially  if  they  are  great 
poets,  learn  the  art  of  verse  early,  and  their  poeti 
cal  vocabulary  sins  rather  by  excess  than  defect. 
They  can  pick  up  and  assimilate  what  is  to  their 
purpose  with  astonishing  rapidity.  The  "Canzo- 
niere  "  of  Dante  was,  at  least  in  part,  written  before 
he  was  twenty -five;  and  Keats,  dying  not  older 
than  that,  left  behind  him  poems  that  astonish  us 
as  much  by  their  maturity  of  style  and  their  Attic 
grace  of  form  as  they  take  the  ear  captive  by  their 
music  and  the  fancy  by  their  opaline  beauty  of 
phrase.  Shakespeare,  surely,  was  as  apt  a  scholar 
as  Keats.  Already  in  the  "Venus  and  Adonis" 
we  find  verses  quite  as  gracious  in  their  interlacing 


SHAKESPEARE'S   RICHARD  III.         117 

movement,  and  as  full,  almost,  of  picturesque  sug 
gestion,  as  those  of  his  maturer  hand.  For  exam 
ple:  - 

"  Bid  me  discourse,  I  will  enchant  thine  ear, 
Or  like  a  fairy  trip  upon  the  green, 
Or  like  a  nymph,  with  long  dishevelled  hair, 
Dance  on  the  sands  and  yet  no  footing  seen." 

Shakespeare  himself  was  pleased  with  these  verses, 
for  a  famous  speech  of  Prospero  in  "The  Tempest " 
has  these  lines :  — 

"  And  ye  that  on  the  sands  with  printless  feet 
Do  chase  the  ebbing  Neptune,  and  do  fly  him 
When  he  comes  back." 

I  think  it  is  interesting  to  find  Shakespeare  improv 
ing  on  a  phrase  of  his  own :  it  is  something  that 
nobody  else  could  do.  There  is  even  greater  excel 
lence  in  the  Sonnets  —  "  Let  me  not  to  the  mar 
riage  of  true  minds,"  and  many  others.  The  thing 
in  which  we  should  naturally  expect  Shakespeare 
to  grow  more  perfect  by  practice  and  observation 
would  be  knowledge  of  stage  effect,  and  skill  in 
presenting  his  subject  in  the  most  telling  way. 

It  would  be  on  the  side  of  the  dramatist,  or  of 
the  playwright,  perhaps  I  had  better  say,  rather 
than  on  the  side  of  the  poet,  that  we  should  look 
for  development.  To  him,  as  to  Moliere,  his  per 
fect  knowledge  of  stage-business  gave  an  enormous 
advantage.  If  he  took  a  play  in  hand  to  remodel 
it  for  his  company,  it  would  be  the  experience  of 
the  actor  much  more  than  the  genius  of  the  poet 
that  would  be  called  into  play.  His  work  would 
lie  in  the  direction  probably  of  curtailment  oftener 


118          SHAKESPEARE'S  RICHARD  III. 

than  of  enlargement;  and  though  it  is  probable 
that  in  the  immaturer  plays  attributed  to  him  by 
Heming  and  Condell  in  their  edition  of  1623  a 
portion,  greater  or  less,  may  be  his,  yet  it  is  hard 
to  believe  that  he  can  be  called  their  author  in  any 
thing  like  the  same  sense  as  we  are  sure  he  is  the 
author  of  those  works  in  which  no  other  hand  can 
be  suspected,  because  no  other  hand  has  ever  been 
capable  of  such  mastery. 

It  must  be  remembered  that  we  come  to  the 
reading  of  all  the  plays  attributed  to  Shakespeare 
with  the  preconception  that  they  are  his.  The  jug 
gler,  if  he  wishes  to  give  us  the  impression  that  a 
sound  comes  from  a  certain  direction,  long  before 
hand  turns  our  attention  that  way,  makes  us  expect 
it  thence,  and  at  last  we  hear  it  so.  This  shows 
the  immense  power  that  a -persuasion  of  this  kind 
has  over  the  imagination  even  in  regard  to  a  thing 
so  physical  as  sound,  and  in  things  so  metaphysical 
as  the  plays  of  Shakespeare  it  applies  with  even 
more  force.  If  we  take  up  a  play  thinking  it  is 
his,  it  is  astonishing  how  many  things  we  excuse, 
and  how  many  things  we  slur  over,  and  so  on,  for 
various  reasons  not  very  satisfactory,  I  think,  if 
strictly  cross-examined.  How  easily  a  preconceived 
idea  that  a  play  is  Shakespeare's  may  mislead  even 
clever  and  accomplished  men  into  seeing  what  they 
expect  to  see  is  proved  by  the  number  of  believers 
in  Ireland's  clumsy  forgery  of  Vortigern.  It  was 
precisely  on  the  style,  in  its  narrow  sense  of  lan 
guage  and  versification,  that  those  too  credulous 
persons  based  their  judgment.  The  German  poet 


SHAKESPEARE'S  RICHARD  IIL          119 

and  critic,  Tieck,  believed  in  the  Shakespearean 
authorship  of  all  the  supposititious  plays,  and  in 
regard  to  one  of  them,  at  least,  "The  Yorkshire 
Tragedy,"  drew  his  arguments  from  the  diction. 
Now,  so  far  as  mere  words  go,  the  dramatists  of 
Shakespeare's  time  all  drew  from  the  same  com 
mon  fund  of  vocables.  The  movement  of  their 
verse,  so  far  as  it  was  mechanical,  would  naturally 
have  many  points  of  resemblance. 

As  an  example  of  the  tests  sometimes  employed 
and  successfully,  but  which  should  not  be  too  im 
plicitly  relied  upon,  I  will  mention  that  which  is 
called  the  double -ending,  where  there  is  a  superflu 
ous  syllable  at  the  end  of  a  line.  This  is  a  favor 
ite  and  often  tiresome  trick  of  Fletcher's.  But 
Shakespeare  also  tried  it  now  and  then,  as  in  the 
choruses  of  "Henry  V.,"  which  are  among  the  fin 
est  examples  of  his  merely  picturesque  writing. 

It  is  possible  that  the  external  manner  of 
Shakespeare  might  have  been  caught  and  imitated 
more  or  less  unconsciously  by  some  of  his  contem 
poraries,  as  it  most  certainly  was  in  the  next  gen 
eration,  notably  by  Webster  and  Shirley.  Fletcher 
was  almost  Shakespeare's  equal  in  poetic  senti 
ment  ;  and  Chapman  rises  sometimes  nearly  to  his 
level  in  those  exultations  of  passionate  self-con 
sciousness  to  which  the  protagonists  of  his  tragedies 
are  lifted  in  the  supreme  crisis  of  their  fate.  But 
Fletcher's  sentiment  seems  artificial  in  compari 
son,  and  his  fancy  never  sings  at  heaven's  gate 
as  Shakespeare's  so  often  does,  and  Chapman's 
grandeur  comes  dangerously  near  to  what  a  friend 


120          SHAKESPEARE'S  RICHARD  III. 

would  call  extravagance  and  an  enemy  bombast.1 
There  is  a  certain  dramatic  passion  in  Shakespeare's 
versification,  too,  which  we  find  in  no  other  of  his 
coevals  except  Marlowe,  and  in  him  far  less  con 
stantly.  Detached  verses,  I  believe,  could  be  cited 
from  far  inferior  men  that  might  well  pass  as  the 
handiwork  of  the  great  master  so  far  as  their  merely 
poetical  quality  is  concerned ;  but  what  I  mean  by 
dramatic  passion  is  that  in  Shakespeare's  best  and 
most  characteristic  work  the  very  verse  is  inter 
penetrated  by  what  is  going  on  in  the  mind  of  the 
speaker,  and  its  movement  hastened  or  retarded  by 
his  emotion  rather  than  by  the  ear  and  choice  of  the 
poet.  Yes,  single  verses,  but  of  other  men,  might 
be  taken  for  his,  but  no  considerable  sequence  of 
them,  and  no  one  of  his  undoubted  plays,  taken  as 
a  whole,  could  ever  by  any  possibility  be  supposed 
to  be  the  creation  of  any  other  poet. 

It  is  something  very  difficult  to  define,  this  im 
pression  which  convinces  us  without  argument  and 
better  than  all  argument,  but  it  would  win  the  ver 
dict  of  whatever  jury.  If  the  play  of  "Cymbeline  " 
had  been  lost,  for  example,  and  the  manuscript 
were  to  be  discovered  to-morrow,  who  would  doubt 
its  authorship?  Nay,  in  this  case  there  are  short 
passages,  single  verses  and  phrases  even,  that  bear 
the  unmistakable  mint-mark  of  him  who  alone 
could  ascend  the  highest  heaven  of  invention;  of 

1  In  Fletcher's  Faithful  Shepherdess,  Amoret  tells  Perigot  that 
she  loves  him 

"  Dearly  as  swallows  love  the  early  dawn," 

which  is  certainly  charming1,  but  seems  much  more  a  felicity  of 
fancy  than  to  touch  the  more  piercing  note  of  passion. 


SHAKESPEARE'S  RICHARD  III.          121 

that  magician  of  whom  Dryden  said  so  truly, 
"Within  that  circle  none  dare  tread  but  he."  And 
it  is  really  curious,  I  may  say  in  passing,  —  that 
verse  of  Dryden  reminds  me  of  it,  —  that  almost  all 
the  poets  who  have  touched  Shakespeare  seem  to 
become  inspired  above  themselves.  The  poem  that 
Ben  Jonson  wrote  in  his  memory  has  a  splendor  of 
movement  about  it  that  is  uncommon  with  him,  — 
a  sort  of  rapture ;  and  Dryden  wrote  nothing  finer 
than  what  he  wrote  about  the  greatest  of  poets,  nor 
is  any  other  play  of  his  comparable  in  quality  with 
"All  for  Love,"  composed  under  Shakespeare's 
immediate  and  obvious  influence. 

There  are  three  special  considerations,  three  em 
inent  and  singular  qualities  of  Shakespeare,  which 
more  than  all,  or  anything  else,  I  think,  set  him  in 
a  different  category  from  his  contemporaries ;  and 
it  is  these  that  I  woidd  apply  as  tests,  not  always 
or  commonly,  indeed,  to  single  verses  or  scenes, 
but  to  the  entire  play.  It  has  been  said,  with  truth, 
of  Byron,  that  there  is  no  great  poet  who  so  often 
falls  below  himself,  and  this  is  no  doubt  true, 
within  narrower  limits,  of  Shakespeare;  but  I  do 
not  think  it  would  be  easy  to  find  a  whole  scene  in 
any  of  his  acknowledged  plays  where  his  mind 
seems  at  dead  low  tide  throughout,  and  lays  bare 
its  shallows  and  its  ooze.  The  first  of  the  three 
characteristics  of  which  I  speak  is  his  incompara 
ble  force  and  delicacy  of  poetic  expression,  which 
can  never  keep  themselves  hidden  for  long,  but 
flash  out  from  time  to  time  like  those  pulses  of 
pale  flame  with  which  the  sky  throbs  at  unprophe- 


122          SHAKESPEARE'S  RICHARD  III. 

siable  intervals,  as  if  in  involuntary  betrayal  of  the 
coming  Northern  Lights.  Such  gleams  occur  in 
"Love's  Labour's  Lost, "and  still  more  frequently 
in  "  A  Midsummer  -Night's  Dream;"  and  here  1 
choose  my  examples  designedly  from  plays  which 
are  known  to  be  early,  and  provably  early,  though 
it  would  be  perfectly  fair,  since  it  is  with  natural 
and  not  acquired  qualities  that  we  are  concerned, 
to  pick  them  from  any  of  his  plays.  Especially 
noteworthy,  also,  I  think,  are  those  passages  in 
which  a  picturesque  phrase  is  made  the  vehicle,  as 
it  were  by  accident,  of  some  pregnant  reflection  or 
profound  thought,  as,  for  instance,  in  "  A  Midsum 
mer-Night's  Dream,"  where  Theseus  says:  — 

"  The  lunatic,  the  lover,  and  the  poet 
Are  of  imagination  all  compact." 

In  all  his  plays  we  have  evidence  that  he  could  not 
long  keep  his  mind  from  that  kind  of  overflow.  I 
think  it  is  sometimes  even  a  defect  that  he  is  apt 
to  be  turned  out  of  his  direct  course  by  the  first 
metaphysical  quibble,  if  I  may  so  call  it,  that 
pops  up  in  his  path;  but  these,  of  course,  are  not 
the  things  by  which  we  can  judge  him. 

One  of  the  surest  of  these  detective  clews  is  this 
continual  cropping-up  (Goethe  would  have  called 
it  intrusion)  of  philosophical  or  metaphysical 
thought  in  the  midst  of  picturesque  imagery  or 
passionate  emotion,  as  if  born  of  the  very  ecstasy 
of  the  language  in  which  it  is  uttered.  Take,  for 
example,  a  passage  from  "The  Two  Noble  Kins 
men  "  which  has  persuaded  nearly  all  critics  that 
Shakespeare  had  a  hand  in  writing  that  play.  It 


SHAKESPEARE'S  RICHARD  III.          123 

is  Arcite's  invocation  of  Mars.  Observe  how  it 
begins  with  picture,  and  then  deepens  down  into  a 
condensed  statement  of  all  the  main  arguments  that 
can  be  urged  in  favor  of  war :  — 

"  Thou  mighty  one  that  with  thy  power  hast  turned 
Green  Xeptune  into  purple  ;  whose  approach 
Comets  forewarn  ;  whose  havoc  in  vast  field 
Unearthed  skulls  proclaim ;  whose  breath  blows  down 
The  teeming  Ceres'  f  oison  ;  who  dost  pluck 
With  hand  armipotent  from  forth  blue  clouds 
The  masoned  turrets  .  .  . 
O  great  corrector  of  enormous  times, 
Shaker  of  o'er-rank  States,  thou  gTand  decider 
Of  dusty  and  old  titles,  that  heal'st  with  blood 
The  earth  when  it  is  sick,  and  cur'st  the  world 
O'  th'  plurisy  of  people !  " 

The  second  characteristic,  of  which  I  should  ex 
pect  to  see  some  adumbration,  at  least,  in  any  un 
mistakable  work  of  Shakespeare  would  be-hunior,  in 
which  itself,  and  in  the  quality  of  it,  he  is  perhaps 
more  unspeakably  superior  to  his  contemporaries 
than  in  some  other  directions,  —  I  mean  in  the  power 
of  pervading  a  character  with  humor,  creating  it 
out  of  humor,  so  to  speak,  and  yet  never  overstep 
ping  the  limits  of  nature  or  coarsening  into  carica 
ture.  In  this  no  man  is  or  ever  was  comparable 
with  him  but  Cervantes.  Of  this  humor  we  have 
something  more  than  the  premonition  in  some  of 
his  earliest  plays. 

A  third  characteristic  of  Shakespeare  is  elo 
quence;  and  this,  of  course,  we  expect  to  meet 
with,  and  do  meet  with,  more  abundantly  in  the 
historical  and  semi-historical  plays  than  in  those 
where  the  intrigue  is  more  private  and  domestic. 


124          SHAKESPEARE'S  RICHARD  III. 

If  I  were  called  upon  to  name  any  one  mark  more 
distinctive  than  another  of  Shakespeare's  work,  it 
would  be  this.  I  do  not  mean  mere  oratory,  as  in 
Antony's  speech  over  the  body  of  Caesar,  but  an 
eloquence  of  impassioned  thought  finding  vent  in 
vivid  imagery.  The  speeches  seem  not  to  be 
composed,  —  they  grow ;  thought  budding  out  of 
thought,  and  image  out  of  image,  by  what  seems 
a  natural  law  of  development,  but  by  what  is  no 
doubt  some  subtler  process  of  association  in  the 
speaker's  mind,  always  gathering  force  and  impet 
uosity  as  it  goes,  from  its  own  very  motion.  Take 
as  examples  the  speeches  of  Ulysses  in  "Troilus 
and  Cressida." 

I  think  these  are  the  three  qualities  —  sub 
tlety  of  poetic  expression,  humor,  and  eloquence 
—  which  we  should  expect  to  find  in  a  play  of 
Shakespeare's,  and  especially  in  an  historical  play. 
Of  each  and  all  of  these  we  find  less  in  "Richard 
III.,"  as  it  appears  to  me,  than  in  any  other  of  his 
plays  of  equal  pretensions ;  for  although  it  is  true 
that  in  "Richard  II."  there  is  no  humorous  char 
acter,  the  humor  of  irony  is  many  times  present 
in  the  speeches  of  the  king  after  his  dethrone 
ment.  There  is  a  gleam  of  humor  here  and  there 
in  "Richard  III.,"  as  where  Richard  rebukes 
Buckingham  for  saying  "'zounds,"  — 

"  O  do  not  swear,  ray  Lord  of  Buckingham ;  " 

and  there  are  many  other  Shakespearean  touches; 
but  the  play  as  a  whole  appears  to  me  always  less 
than  it  should  be,  except  in  scenic  effectiveness,  to 


SHAKESPEARE'S  RICHARD  III.         125 

be  reckoned  a  work  from  Shakespeare's  brain  and 
hand  alone,  or  even  mainly,  —  less  in  all  the  qual 
ities  and  dimensions  that  are  most  exclusively  and 
characteristically  his.  This  I  think  to  be  conclu 
sive,  for,  as  Goethe  says  very  truly,  if  there  be  any 
defect  in  the  most  admirable  of  Shakespeare's 
^lays,  it  is  that  they  are  more  than  they  should  be. 
The  same  great  critic,  speaking  of  his  "Henry 
IV.,"  says  with  equal  truth  "that,  were  everything 
else  that  has  come  down  to  us  of  the  same  kind 
lost,  [the  arts  of]  poesy  and  rhetoric  could  be  re 
created  out  of  it." 

The  first  impression  made  upon  us  by  "Richard 
III."  is  that  it  is  thoroughly  melodramatic  in  con 
ception  and  execution.  Whoever  has  seen  it  upon 
the  stage  knows  that  the  actor  of  Richard  is  sure 
to  offend  against  every  canon  of  taste  laid  down  by 
Hamlet  in  his  advice  to  the  players.  He  is  sure  to 
tear  his  passion  to  rags  and  tatters ;  he  is  sure  to 
split  the  ears  of  the  groundlings ;  and  he  is  sure  to 
overstep  the  modesty  of  nature  with  every  one  of 
his  stage  strides.  Now,  it  is  not  impossible  that 
Shakespeare,  as  a  caterer  for  the  public  taste,  may 
have  been  willing  that  the  groundlings  as  well  as 
other  people  should  help  to  fill  the  coffers  of  his 
company,  and  that  the  right  kind  of  attraction 
should  accordingly  be  offered  them.  It  is  therefore 
conceivable  that  he  may  have  retouched  or  even 
added  to  a  poor  play  which  had  already  proved 
popular;  but  it  is  not  conceivable  that  he  should 
have  written  an  entire  play  in  violation  of  those 
principles  of  taste  which  we  may  deduce  more  or 
less  clearly  from  everything  he  wrote. 


126         SHAKESPEARE'S  RICHARD  III. 

Then,  again,  Shakespeare's  patriotism  is  charac 
teristic  of  his  plays.  It  is  quite  as  intense  as  that 
of  Burns;  and  in  a  play  dealing  with  a  subject  like 
that  of  "Richard  III."  one  would  expect  to  see 
this  patriotism  show  itself  in  a  rather  more  pro 
nounced  manner  than  usual,  because  the  battle  of 
Bosworth  Field,  with  which  the  play  ends,  ended 
also  a  long  and  tragic  series  of  wars,  and  estab 
lished  on  the  throne  the  grandfather  of  the  sov 
ereign  who  was  reigning  when  the  play  was  put 
upon  the  stage.  Now  there  is  one  allusion,  a  sort 
of  prophetic  allusion,  in  this  play  to  the  succession 
of  Henry  VII. 's  descendants  to  the  throne;  but 
if  you  compare  it  with  the  admirable  way  in  which 
Shakespeare  —  I  grant  he  was  then  older  and  his 
faculties  more  mature  —  has  dealt  with  a  similar 
matter  in  "Macbeth,"  in  the  second  scene  with 
the  witches,  which  impresses  our  imagination  al 
most  as  much  as  it  does  that  of  the  usurper  him 
self  ;  if  we  consider,  moreover,  that  in  the  play  of 
"Richard  III."  there  is  an  almost  ludicrous  proces 
sion  of  ghosts,  —  for  there  are  eleven  of  them  who 
pass  through,  speaking  to  Richard  on  the  right  and 
to  Richmond  on  the  left,  —  and  if  we  compare 
this  with  Shakespeare's  treatment  of  the  supernat 
ural  in  any  of  his  undoubted  plays,  I  think  we 
shall  feel  that  the  inferiority  is  not  one  of  degree, 
but  one  of  kind. 

I  cannot  conceive  how  anybody  should  believe 
that  Shakespeare  wrote  the  two  speeches  which 
are  made  to  their  armies  by  Richard  and  Richmond 
respectively.  That  of  Richard  is  by  far  the  better, 


SHAKESPEARE'S  RICHARD  III.         127 

and  has  something  of  the  true  Shakespearean  ring 
in  it,  something  of  his  English  scorn  for  the  up 
start  and  the  foreigner,  notably  where  he  calls 
Richmond 

"  A  milksop,  one  that  never  in  his  life 
Felt  so  much  cold  as  over  shoes  in  snow," 

but  that  of  his  antagonist  falls  ludicrously  flat 
to  shame  his  worshippers.  Compare  it  with  the 
speech  of  Henry  V.  under  the  walls  of  Harfleur,  or 
his  reply  to  Westmoreland.  I  can  conceive  almost 
anything  of  Shakespeare  except  his  being  dull 
through  a  speech  of  twenty  lines.  I  do  not  think  he 
is  ever  that.  He  may  be  hyperbolical ;  he  may  be 
this,  that,  or  the  other ;  but  whatever  it  is,  his  f ault 
is  not  that  he  is  dull.  If  it  were  not  so  late,  I 
woidd  read  to  you  a  passage  from  an  earlier  play, 
-the  speech  of  Gaunt  in  "Richard  II.;"  and  I 
am  glad  to  refer  to  this,  because  it  shows  in  part 
that  eloquence  and  that  intensity  of  patriotism 
which  display  themselves  whenever  they  can  find  or 
make  an  opportunity. 

If  Shakespeare  undertook  to  remodel  an  already 
existing  piece,  we  should  expect  to  find  his  hand 
in  the  opening  scene  —  for  in  these  his  skill  is  al 
ways  noticeable  in  arresting  attention  and  exciting 
interest.  Richard's  soliloquy  at  the  beginning  of 
the  play  may  be  his  in  part,  though  there  is  a 
clumsiness  in  Richard's  way  of  declaring  himself 
a  scoundrel,  and  in  the  reasons  he  gives  for  being 
one,  which  is  helplessly  ridiculous.  He  says :  — 

"  And  therefore  —  since  I  cannot  prove  a  lover. 
To  entertain  these  fair,  well-spoken  days  — 


128          SHAKESPEARE'S  RICHARD  III. 

I  am  determined  to  prove  a  villain, 

And  hate  the  idle  pleasures  of  these  days." 

And  yet  in  the  very  next  scene  he  wooes  and  wins 
Anne,  though  both  she  and  Elizabeth  had  told  him 
very  frankly  that  they  knew  he  was  a  devil.  It 
would  be  a  mistake  to  compare  this  betraying  of 
himself  by  Richard  with  the  cynical  and  almost  in 
decent  frankness  of  lago.  lago  was  an  Italian  of 
the  Renaissance  as  Shakespeare  might  have  divined 
him  through  that  penetrating  psychology  of  his; 
and  I  have  been  told  that  even  now  Italians  who 
see  Salvini's  version  of  Othello  sympathize  rather 
with  lago  than  with  the  Moor,  whom  they  consider 
to  be  a  dull-witted  fellow,  deserving  the  dupery  of 
which  he  was  the  victim. 

Nevertheless  "Richard  III."  is  a  most  effective 
acting  play.  There  are,  certainly,  what  seem  to 
be  unmistakable  traces  of  Shakespeare  in  some  of 
the  worst  scenes,  though  I  am  not  sure  that  if  the 
play  had  been  lost,  and  should  be  discovered  in  our 
day,  this  would  pass  without  question.  The  solil 
oquy  of  Clarence  can  hardly  be  attributed  to  any 
other  hand,  and  there  are  gleams  from  time  to  time 
that  look  like  manifest  records  of  his  kindling 
touch.  But  the  scolding  mob  of  widow  queens, 
who  make  their  billingsgate  more  intolerable  by 
putting  it  into  bad  blank  verse,  and  the  childish 
procession  of  eleven  ghosts  seem  to  me  very  little 
in  Shakespeare's  style.  For  in  nothing,  as  I  have 
said,  is  he  more  singular  and  preeminent  than  in 
his  management  of  the  supernatural. 

I  find  that  my  time  has  got  the  better  of  me. 


SHAKESPEARE'S  RICHARD  III.         129 

I  shall  merely  ask  you  to  read  "Richard  III." 
with  attention,  and  with  a  comparison  such  as  I 
have  hinted  at  between  this  and  other  plays  which 
are  most  nearly  contemporary  with  it,  and  I  there 
fore  shall  not  trouble  you  with  further  passages. 

It  seems  to  me  that  an  examination  of  "Rich 
ard  III."  plainly  indicates  that  it  is  a  play  which 
Shakespeare  adapted  to  the  stage,  making  addi 
tions,  sometimes  longer  and  sometimes  shorter ;  and 
that,  towards  the  end,  either  growing  weary  of  his 
work  or  pressed  for  time,  he  left  the  older  author, 
whoever  he  was,  pretty  much  to  himself.  It  woidd 
be  interesting  i  >  follow  out  minutely  a  question 
of  this  kind,  but  that  would  not  be  possible  within 
the  limits  of  an  occasion  like  this.  It  will  be 
enough  if  I  have  succeeded  in  interesting  you  to  a 
certain  extent  in  a  kind  of  discussion  that  has  at 
least  the  merit  of  withdrawing  us  for  a  brief  hour 
from  the  more  clamorous  interests  and  questions  of 
the  day  to  topics  which,  if  not  so  important,  have 
also  a  perennial  value  of  their  own. 

While  I  believe  in  the  maintenance  of  classical 
learning  in  our  universities,  I  never  open  my  Shake 
speare  but  I  find  myself  wishing  that  there  might 
be  professorships  established  for  the  expounding  of 
his  works  as  there  used  to  be  for  those  of  Dante  in 
Italy.  There  is  nothing  in  all  literature  so  stimu 
lating  and  suggestive  as  the  thought  he  seems  to 
drop  by  chance,  as  if  his  hands  were  too  full;  no 
thing  so  cheery  as  his  humor ;  nothing  that  laps  us 
in  Elysium  so  quickly  as  the  lovely  images  which 
he  marries  to  the  music  of  his  verse.  He  is  also  a 


130          SHAKESPEARE'S  RICHARD  III. 

great  master  of  rhetoric  in  teaching  us  what  to  fol 
low,  and  sometimes  quite  as  usefully  what  to  avoid. 
I  value  him  above  all  for  this :  that  for  those  who 
know  no  language  but  their  own  there  is  as  much 
intellectual  training  to  be  got  from  the  study  of  his 
works  as  from  that  of  the  works  of  any,  I  had  al 
most  said  all,  of  the  great  writers  of  antiquity. 


THE  STUDY  OF  MODERN  LANGUAGES.1 

1889. 

THREE  years  ago  I  was  one  of  those  who  gath 
ered  in  the  Sanders  Theatre  to  commemorate  the 
two  hundred  and  fiftieth  anniversary  of  a  college 
founded  to  perpetuate  living  learning  chiefly  by 
the  help  of  three  dead  languages,  the  Hebrew,  the 
Greek,  and  the  Latin.  I  have  given  them  that 
order  of  precedence  which  they  had  in  the  minds 
of  those  our  pious  founders.  The  Hebrew  came 
first  because  they  believed  that  it  had  been  spoken 
by  God  himself ,  and  that  it  would  have  been  the 
common  speech  of  mankind  but  for  the  judicial  in 
vention  of  the  modern  languages  at  Shinar.  Greek 
came  next  because  the  New  Testament  was  written 
in  that  tongue,  and  Latin  last  as  the  interpreter 
between  scholars.  Of  the  men  who  stood  about 
that  fateful  cradle  swung  from  bough  of  the  prime 
val  forest,  there  were  probably  few  who  believed 
that  a  book  written  in  any  living  language  could 
itself  live. 

For  nearly  two  hundred  years  no  modern  lan 
guage  was  continuously  and  systematically  taught 
here.  In  the  latter  half  of  the  last  century  a  stray 

1  An  address  before  the  Modern  Language  Association  of 
America. 


132       STUDY   OF  MODERN  LANGUAGES 

Frenchman  was  caught  now  and  then,  and  kept  as 
long  as  he  could  endure  the  baiting  of  his  pupils. 
After  failing  as  a  teacher  of  his  mother-tongue,  he 
commonly  turned  dancing-master,  a  calling  which 
public  opinion  seems  to  have  put  on  the  same  in 
tellectual  level  with  the  other.  Whatever  haphaz 
ard  teaching  of  French  there  may  have  been  was, 
no  doubt,  for  the  benefit  of  those  youth  of  the 
better  classes  who  might  go  abroad  after  taking 
their  degrees.  By  hook  or  by  crook  some  enthusi 
asts  managed  to  learn  German,1  but  there  was  no 
official  teacher  before  Dr.  Follen  about  sixty  years 
ago.  When  at  last  a  chair  of  French  and  Spanish 
was  established,  it  was  rather  with  an  eye  to  com 
merce  than  to  culture. 

It  indicates  a  very  remarkable,  and,  I  think, 
wholesome  change  in  our  way  of  looking  at  things 
that  I  should  now  be  addressing  a  numerous  So 
ciety  composed  wholly  of  men  engaged  in  teaching 
thoroughly  and  scientifically  the  very  languages 
once  deemed  unworthy  to  be  taught  at  all  except 
as  a  social  accomplishment  or  as  a  commercial 
subsidiary.  There  are  now,  I  believe,  as  many 
teachers  in  that  single  department  of  Harvard 
College  as  sufficed  for  the  entire  undergraduate 
course  when  I  took  my  first  degree.  And  this 
change  has  taken  place  within  two  generations. 

1  Mr.  George  Bancroft  told  me  that  he  learned  German  of 
Professor  Sydney  Willard,  who,  himself  self -taught,  had  no  notion 
of  its  pronunciation.  One  instructor  in  French  we  had,  a  little 
more  than  a  century  ago,  in  Albert  Gallatin,  a  Swiss,  afterwards 
eminent  as  a  teacher  in  statesmanship  and  diplomacy.  There  was 
no  regularly  appointed  tutor  in  French  before  1806. 


STUDY  OF  MODERN  LANGUAGES      133 

Toy  5'  # 


I  make  this  familiar  quotation  for  two  reasons : 
because  Chapman  translates  /xepoVcov  "divers-lan- 
guaged,"  which  is  apt  for  our  occasion,  and  be 
cause  it  enables  me  to  make  an  easier  transition 
to  what  I  am  about  to  say ;  namely,  that  I  rise  to 
address  you  not  without  a  certain  feeling  of  em 
barrassment.  For  every  man,  is,  more  or  less  con 
sciously,  the  prisoner  of  his  date,  and  I  must 
confess  that  I  was  a  great  while  in  emancipating 
myself  from  the  formula  which  prescribed  the 
Greek  and  Latin  Classics  as  the  canonical  books 
of  that  infallible  Church  of  Culture  outside  of 
which  there  could  be  no  salvation,  —  none,  at  least, 
that  was  orthodox.  Indeed,  I  am  not  sure  that  I 
have  wholly  emancipated  myself  even  yet.  The 
old  phrases  (for  mere  phrases  they  had  mostly 
come  to  be)  still  sing  in  my  ears  with  a  pleasing  if 
not  a  prevailing  enchantment. 

The  traditions  which  had  dictated  this  formula 
were  of  long  standing  and  of  eminent  respecta 
bility.  They  dated  back  to  the  exemplaria  Grceca 
of  Horace.  For  centuries  the  lano-ua^es  which 

O          O 

served  men  for  all  the  occasions  of  private  life 
were  put  under  a  ban,  and  the  revival  of  learning 
extended  this  outlawry  to  the  literature,  such  as  it 
was,  that  had  found  vent  through  them.  Even 
the  authors  of  that  literature  tacitly  admitted  the 
justice  of  such  condemnation  when  they  used  the 
word  Latin  as  meaning  language  par  excellence, 
just  as  the  Newfoundlanders  say  fish  when  they 


134      STUDY  OF  MODERN  LANGUAGES 

mean  cod.  They  could  be  witty,  eloquent,  pathetic, 
poetical,  competent,  in  a  word,  to  every  demand  of 
their  daily  lives,  in  their  mother-tongue,  as  the 
Greeks  and  Romans  had  been  in  theirs,  but  all 
this  would  not  do ;  what  was  so  embalmed  would 
not  keep.  All  the  prudent  and  forethoughtful 
among  them  accordingly  were  careful  to  put  their 
thoughts  and  fancies,  or  what  with  them  supplied 
the  place  of  these  commodities,  into  Latin  as  the 
one  infallible  pickle.  They  forgot  the  salt,  to  be 
sure,  an  ingredient  which  the  author  alone  can 
furnish.  For  it  is  not  the  language  in  which  a 
man  writes,  but  what  he  has  been  able  to  make 
that  language  say  or  sing,  that  resists  decay.  Yet 
men  were  naturally  a  great  while  in  reaching  this 
conviction.  They  thought  it  was  not  good  form, 
as  the  phrase  is,  to  be  pleased  with  what,  and  what 
alone,  really  touched  them  home.  The  reproach  — 
at  vestri  proavi  —  rang  deterrent  in  their  ears. 
The  author  of  "  Partonopeus  de  Blois,"  it  is  true, 
plucks  up  a  proper  spirit :  — 

"  Oil  clerc  dient  que  n'est  pas  sens 
Qu'escrive  estoire  d'antif  tens, 
Quant  je  nes  escris  en  latin, 
Et  que  je  perc  mon  tans  enfin ; 
Cil  le  perdent  qui  ne  font  rien 
Moult  plus  que  je  ne  fac  le  mien." 

And  the  sarcasm  of  the  last  couplet  was  more 
biting  even  than  the  author  thought  it.  Those 
moderns  who  wrote  in  Latin  truly  nefaisoient  rien, 
for  I  cannot  recollect  any  work  of  the  kind  that 
has  in  any  sense  survived  as  literature,  unless  it 


STUDY   OF  MODERN  LANGUAGES      135 

be  the  "  Epistolae  Obscurorum  Virorum  "  (whose 
Latin  is  a  part  of  its  humor)  and  a  few  short  copies 
of  verse,  as  they  used,  aptly  enough,  to  be  called. 
Milton's  foreign  correspondence  as  Secretary  for  the 
Commonwealth  was  probably  the  latest  instance  of 
the  use  of  Latin  in  diplomacy. 

You  all  remember  Du  Bellay's  eloquent  protest, 
"  I  cannot  sufficiently  blame  the  foolish  arrogance 
and  temerity  of  some  of  our  nation,  who,  being 
least  of  all  Greeks  or  Latins,  depreciate  and  reject 
with  a  more  than  Stoic  brow  everything  written  in 
French,  and  I  cannot  sufficiently  wonder  at  the 
strange  opinion  of  some  learned  men,  who  think 
our  vernacular  incapable  of  all  good  literature  and 
erudition."  When  this  was  said,  Montaigne  was 
already  sixteen  years  old,  and,  not  to  speak  of  the 
great  mass  of  verse  and  prose  then  dormant  in  man 
uscript,  France  had  produced  in  Rabelais  a  great 
humorist  and  strangely  open-eyed  thinker,  and  in 
Villon  a  poet  who  had  written  at  least  one  im 
mortal  poem,  which  still  touches  us  with  that  pain 
less  sense  of  the  lachrymce  rerum  so  consoling  in 
poetry  and  the  burthen  of  which 

"  Ou  sont  les  neiges  cTantan  ?  " 

falters  and  fades  away  in  the  ear  like  the  last 
stroke  of  Beauty's  passing-bell.  I  must  not  let 
you  forget  that  Du  Bellay  had  formed  himself  on 
the  classics,  and  that  he  insists  on  the  assiduous 
study  of  them.  "Devour  them,"  he  says,  "not  hi 
order  to  imitate,  but  to  turn  them  into  blood  and 
nutriment."  And  surely  this  always  has  been  and 
always  will  be  their  true  use. 


136       STUDY  OF  MODERN  LANGUAGES 

It  was  not  long  before  the  living  languages  jus 
tified  their  right  to  exist  by  producing  a  living 
literature,  but  as  the  knowledge  of  Greek  and  Latin 
was  the  exclusive  privilege  of  a  class,  that  class 
naturally  made  an  obstinate  defence  of  its  vested 
rights.  Nor  was  it  less  natural  that  men  like  Ba 
con,  who  felt  that  he  was  speaking  to  the  civilized 
world,  and  lesser  men,  who  fancied  themselves 
charged  with  a  pressing  message  to  it,  should 
choose  to  utter  themselves  in  the  only  tongue  that 
was  cosmopolitan.  But  already  such  books  as  had 
more  than  a  provincial  meaning,  though  written  in 
what  the  learned  still  looked  on  as  patois,  were 
beginning  to  be  translated  into  the  other  European 
languages.  The  invention  of  printing  had  insensi 
bly  but  surely  enlarged  the  audience  which  genius 
addresses.  That  there  were  persons  in  England 
who  had  learned  something  of  French,  Italian, 
Spanish,  and  of  High  and  Low  Dutch  three  cen 
turies  ago  is  shown  by  the  dramatists  of  the  day, 
but  the  speech  of  the  foreigner  was  still  generally 
regarded  as  something  noxious.  Later  generations 
shared  the  prejudice  of  sturdy  Abbot  Samson,  who 
confirmed  the  manor  of  Thorpe  "cuidam  Anglico 
natione  .  .  .  de  cujus  fidelitate  plenius  confidebat 
quia  bonus  agricola  erat  et  quia  nesciebat  loqui 
Gallice"  This  was  in  1182,  but  there  is  a  still 
more  amusing  instance  of  the  same  prejudice  so 
lately  as  1668.  "  Erasmus  hath  also  a  notable 
story  of  a  man  of  the  same  age,  an  Italian,  that 
had  never  been  in  Germany,  and  yet  he  spake 
the  German  tongue  most  elegantly,  being  as  one 


STUDY    OF  MODERN  LANGUAGES      137 

possessed  of  the  Devil ;  notwithstanding  was  cured 
by  a  Physician  that  administered  a  medicine  which 
expelled  an  infinite  number  of  ivorms,  whereby  he 
was  also  freed  of  his  knowledge,  of  the  German 
tongue"  1  Dr.  Ramesey  seems  in  doubt  whether 
the  vermin  or  the  language  were  the  greater  de 
liverance. 

Even  after  it  could  no  longer  be  maintained 
that  no  masterpiece  could  be  written  in  a  modern 
language,  it  was  affirmed,  and  on  very  plausible 
grounds,  that  no  masterpiece  of  style  could  be  so 
written  unless  after  sedulous  study  of  the  ancient 
and  especially  of  the  Grecian  models.  This  may 
have  been  partially,  but  was  it  entirely  true  ?  Were 
those  elements  of  the  human  mind  which  tease  it 
with  the  longing  for  perfection  in  literary  work 
manship  peculiar  to  the  Greeks  ?  Before  the  new 
birth  of  letters,  Dante  (though  the  general  scheme 
of  his  great  poem  be  rather  mechanical  than  or 
ganic)  had  given  proof  of  a  style,  which,  where  it 
is  best,  is  so  parsimonious  in  the  number  of  its  words, 
so  goldenly  sufficient  in  the  value  of  them,  that  we 
must  go  back  to  Tacitus  for  a  comparison,  and  per 
haps  not  even  to  him  for  a  parallel.  But  Dante 
was  a  great  genius,  and  language  curtsies  to  its 
natural  kings.  I  will  take  a  humbler  instance,  the 
Chant-fable  of  "  Aucassin  and  Nicolete,"  rippling 
into  song,  and  subsiding  from  it  unconsciously  as 
a  brook.  Leaving  out  the  episode  of  the  King  of 

1  From  a  treatise  on  worms  by  William  Ramesey,  physician  in 
ordinary  to  Charles  II.,  which  contains  some  very  direct  hints  of 
the  modern  germ-theory  of  disease. 


138      STUDY  OF  MODERN  LANGUAGES 

Torelore,  evidently  thrust  in  for  the  groundlings, 
what  is  there  like  it  for  that  unpremeditated  charm 
which  is  beyond  the  reach  of  literary  artifice  and 
perhaps  does  not  survive  the  early  maidenhood  of 
language  ?  If  this  be  not  style,  then  there  is  some 
thing  better  than  style.  And  is  there  anything  so 
like  the  best  epigrams  of  Meleager  in  grace  of 
natural  feeling,  in  the  fine  tact  which  says  all  and 
leaves  it  said  unblurred  by  afterthought,  as  some 
little  snatches  of  song  by  nameless  French  minstrels 
of  five  centuries  ago  ? 

It  is  instructive  that,  only  fifty  years  after  Du 
Bellay  wrote  the  passage  I  have  quoted,  Bishop 
Hall  was  indirectly  praising  Sidney  for  having 
learned  in  France  and  brought  back  with  him  to 
England  that  very  specialty  of  culture  which  we  are 
told  can  only  be  got  in  ancient  Greece  or,  at  second 
hand,  in  ancient  Rome.  Speaking  of  some  name 
less  rhymer,  he  says  of  him  that 

"  He  knows  the  grace  of  that  new  elegance 
Which  sweet  Philisides  fetched  late  from  France." 

And  did  not  Spenser  (whose  earliest  essay  in 
verse  seems  to  have  been  translated  from  Du  Bel- 
lay)  form  himself  on  French  and  Italian  models  ? 
Did  not  Chaucer  and  Gower,  the  shapers  of  our 
tongue,  draw  from  the  same  sources  ?  Does  not 
Higgins  tell  us  in  the  "  Mirrour  for  Magistrates  " 
that  Buckhurst,  Phaer,  Tuberville,  Golding,  and 
Gascoygne  imitated  Marot  ?  Did  not  Montaigne 
prompt  Bacon  to  his  Essays  and  Browne  (uncon 
sciously  and  indirectly,  it  may  be)  to  his  "  Eeligio 
Medici "  ?  Did  not  Skelton  borrow  his  so-called 


STUDY   OF  MODERN  LANGUAGES       139 

Skeltonian  measure  from  France  ?  Is  not  the  verse 
of  ''  Paradise  Lost  "  moulded  on  that  of  the  "  Di- 
vina  Commedia"?  Did  not  Dryden's  prose  and 
Pope's  verse  profit  by  Parisian  example  ?  Nay,  in 
our  own  time,  is  it  not  whispered  that  more  than 
one  of  our  masters  of  style  in  English,  and  they, 
too,  among  the  chief  apostles  of  classic  culture, 
owe  more  of  this  mastery  to  Paris  than  to  Athens 
or  Rome  ?  I  am  not  going  to  renew  the  Battle  of 
the  Books,  nor  would  I  be  understood  as  question 
ing  the  rightful  place  so  long  held  by  ancient  and 
especially  by  Greek  literature  as  an  element  of  cult 
ure  and  that  the  most  fruitful.  But  I  hold  this 
evening  a  brief  for  the  Modern  Languages,  and  am 
bound  to  put  their  case  in  as  fair  a  light  as  I  con 
scientiously  can.  Your  kindness  has  put  me  in  a 
position  where  I  am  forced  to  reconsider  my  opin 
ions  and  to  discover,  if  I  can,  how  far  prejudice 
and  tradition  have  had  a  hand  in  forming  them. 

I  will  not  say  with  the  Emperor  Charles  V.  that 
a  man  is  as  many  men  as  he  knows  languages,  and 
still  less  with  Lord  Burleigh  that  such  polyglottisni 
is  but  "  to  have  one  meat  served  in  divers  dishes." 
But  I  think  that  to  know  the  literature  of  another 
language,  whether  dead  or  living  matters  not,  gives 
us  the  prime  benefits  of  foreign  travel.  It  relieves 
us  from  what  Richard  Lassels  aptly  calls  a  "  moral 
Excommunication  ;  "  it  greatly  widens  the  mind's 
range  of  view,  and  therefore  of  comparison,  thus 
strengthening  the  judicial  faculty ;  and  it  teaches 
us  to  consider  the  relations  of  things  to  each  other 
and  to  some  general  scheme  rather  than  to  our- 


140      STUDY   OF  MODERN  LANGUAGES 

selves  ;  above  all,  it  enlarges  aesthetic  charity.  It 
has  seemed  to  me  also  that  a  foreign  language, 
quite  as  much  as  a  dead  one,  has  the  advantage  of 
putting  whatever  is  written  in  it  at  just  such  a  dis 
tance  as  is  needed  for  a  proper  mental  perspective. 
No  doubt  this  strangeness,  this  novelty,  adds  much 
to  the  pleasure  we  feel  in  reading  the  literature  of 
other  languages  than  our  own.  It  plays  the  part 
of  poet  for  us  by  putting  familiar  things  in  an  un 
accustomed  way  so  deftly  that  we  feel  as  if  we  had 
gained  another  sense  and  had  ourselves  a  share  in 
the  sorcery  that  is  practised  on  us.  The  words  of 
our  mother-tongue  have  been  worn  smooth  by  so 
often  rubbing  against  our  lips  or  minds,  while  the 
alien  word  has  all  the  subtle  emphasis  and  beauty 
of  some  new-minted  coin  of  ancient  Syracuse.  In 
our  critical  estimates  we  should  be  on  our  guard 
against  this  charm. 

In  reading  such  books  as  chiefly  deserve  to  be 
read  in  any  foreign  language,  it  is  wise  to  translate 
consciously  and  in  words  as  we  read.  There  is 
110  such  help  to  a  fuller  mastery  of  our  vernacu 
lar.  It  compels  us  to  such  a  choosing  and  testing, 
to  so  nice  a  discrimination  of  sound,  propriety,  po 
sition,  and  shade  of  meaning,  that  we  now  first 
learn  the  secret  of  the  words  we  have  been  using 
or  misusing  all  our  lives,  and  are  gradually  made 
aware  that  to  set  forth  even  the  plainest  matter,  as 
it  should  be  set  forth,  is  not  only  a  very  difficult 
thing,  calling  for  thought  and  practice,  but  an 
affair  of  conscience  as  well.  Translating  teaches 
us  as  nothing  else  can,  not  only  that  there  is  a  best 


STUDY   OF  MODERN  LANGUAGES      141 

way,  but  that  it  is  the  only  way.  Those  who  have 
tried  it  know  too  well  how  easy  it  is  to  grasp  the 
verbal  meaning  of  a  sentence  or  of  a  verse.  That 
is  the  bird  in  the  hand.  The  real  meaning,  the 
soul  of  it,  that  which  makes  it  literature  and  not 
jargon,  that  is  the  bird  in  the  bush  which  tanta 
lizes  and  stimulates  with  the  vanishing  glimpses  we 
catch  of  it  as  it  flits  from  one  to  another  lurking- 
place,  — 

"  Et  fugit  ad  salices  et  se  cupit  ante  videri." 

After  all,  I  am  driven  back  to  my  Virgil  again, 
you  see,  for  the  happiest  expression  of  what  I  was 
trying  to  say.  It  was  these  shy  allurements  and 
provocations  of  Omar  Khayyam's  Persian  which  led 
Fitzgerald  to  many  a  peerless  phrase  and  made  an 
original  poet  of  him  in  the  very  act  of  translating. 
I  cite  this  instance  merely  by  way  of  hint  that  as 
a  spur  to  the  mind,  as  an  open-sesame  to  the  trea 
sures  of  our  native  vocabulary,  the  study  of  a  liv 
ing  language  (for  literary,  not  linguistic,  ends) 
may  serve  as  well  as  that  of  any  which  we  rather 
inaptly  call  dead. 

We  are  told  that  perfection  of  form  can  be 
learned  only  of  the  Greeks,  and  it  is  certainly  true 
that  many  among  them  attained  to,  or  developed 
out  of  some  hereditary  germ  of  aptitude,  a  sense 
of  proportion  and  of  the  helpful  relation  of  parts 
to  the  whole  organism  which  other  races  mostly 
grope  after  in  vain.  Spenser,  in  the  enthusiasm 
of  his  new  Platonism,  tells  us  that  "  Soul  is  form, 
and  doth  the  body  make,"  and  no  doubt  this  is 
true  of  the  highest  artistic  genius.  Form  without 


142       STUDY  OF  MODERN  LANGUAGES 

soul,  the  most  obsequious  observance  of  the  unities, 
the  most  perfect  a  priori  adjustment  of  parts,  is  a 
lifeless  thing,  like  those  machines  of  perpetual  mo 
tion  admirable  in  every  way  but  one  —  that  they 
will  not  go.  I  believe  that  I  understand  and  value 
form  as  much  as  I  should,  but  I  also  believe  that 
some  of  those  who  have  insisted  most  strongly  on 
its  supreme  worth  as  the  shaping  soul  of  a  work  of 
art  have  imprisoned  the  word  "  soul  "  in  a  single 
one  of  its  many  meanings  and  the  soul  itself  in  a 
single  one  of  its  many  functions.  For  the  soul 
is  not  only  that  which  gives  form,  but  that  which 
gives  life,  the  mysterious  and  pervasive  essence  al 
ways  in  itself  beautiful,  not  always  so  in  the  shapes 
which  it  informs,  but  even  then  full  of  infinite 
suggestion.  In  literature  it  is  what  we  call  genius, 
an  insoluble  ingredient  which  kindles,  lights,  in 
spires,  and  transmits  impulsion  to  other  minds, 
wakens  energies  in  them  hitherto  latent,  and  makes 
them  startlingly  aware  that  they  too  may  be  parts 
of  the  controlling  purpose  of  the  world.  A  book 
may  be  great  in  other  ways  than  as  a  lesson  in 
form,  and  it  may  be  for  other  qualities  that  it  is 
most  precious  to  us.  Is  it  nothing,  then,  to  have 
conversed  with  genius  ?  Goethe's  "  Iphigenie  "  is 
far  more  perfect  in  form  than  his  "  Faust,"  which 
is  indeed  but  a  succession  of  scenes  strung  together 
on  a  thread  of  moral  or  dramatic  purpose,  yet  it  is 
"  Faust  "  that  we  read  and  hold  dear  alike  for  its 
meaning  and  for  the  delight  it  gives  us.  And  if  we 
talk  of  classics ;  what,  then,  is  a  classic,  if  it  be 
not  a  book  that  forever  delights,  inspires,  and  sur- 


STUDY   OF  MODERN  LANGUAGES       143 

prises,  —  in  which,  and  in  ourselves,  by  its  help, 
we  make  new  discoveries  every  day  ?  What  book 
has  so  warmly  embosomed  itself  in  the  mind  and 
memory  of  men  as  the  Iliad?  And  yet  surely 
not  by  its  perfection  in  form  so  much  as  by  the 
stately  simplicity  of  its  style,  by  its  pathetic  truth 
to  nature,  for  so  loose  and  discursive  is  its  plan  as 
to  have  supplied  plausible  argument  for  a  diversity 
of  authorship.  What  work  of  classic  antiquity 
lias  given  the  bransle,  as  he  would  have  called  it, 
to  more  fruitful  thinking  than  the  Essays  of  Mon 
taigne,  the  most  planless  of  men  who  ever  looked  be 
fore  and  after,  a  chaos  indeed,  but  a  chaos  swarm 
ing  with  germs  of  evolution  ?  There  have  been 
men  of  genius,  like  Emerson,  richly  seminative 
for  other  minds  ;  like  Browning,  full  of  wholesome 
ferment  for  other  minds,  though  wholly  destitute 
of  any  proper  sense  of  form.  Yet  perhaps  those 
portions  of  their  writings  where  their  genius  has 
precipitated  itself  in  perfect,  if  detached  and  un 
related  crystals,  flashing  back  the  light  of  our  com 
mon  day  tinged  with  the  diviner  hue  of  their  own 
nature,  are  and  will  continue  to  be  a  more  precious 
and  fecund  possession  of  mankind  than  many 
works  more  praiseworthy  as  wholes,  but  in  which 
the  vitality  is  less  abounding, .  or  seems  so  because 
more  evenly  distributed  and  therefore  less  capable 
of  giving  that  electric  shock  which  thrills  through 
every  fibre  of  the  soul. 

But  Samuel  Daniel,  an  Elizabethan  poet  less 
valued  now  than  many  an  inferior  man,  has  said 
something  to  my  purpose  far  better  than  I  could 


144       STUDY  OF  MODERN  LANGUAGES 

have  said  it.  Nor  is  he  a  suspicious  witness,  for 
he  is  himself  a  master  of  style.  He  had  studied 
the  art  of  writing,  and  his  diction  has  accordingly 
been  less  obscured  by  time  than  that  of  most  of  his 
contemporaries.  He  knew  his  classics,  too,  and  his 
dullest  work  is  the  tragedy  of  "  Cleopatra  "  shaped 
on  a  classic  model,  presumably  Seneca,  certainly 
not  the  best.  But  he  had  modern  instincts  and  a 
conviction  that  the  later  generations  of  men  had 
also  their  rights,  among  others  that  of  speaking 
their  minds  in  such  forms  as  were  most  congenial 
to  them.  In  answer  to  some  one  who  had  de 
nounced  the  use  of  rhyme  as  barbarous,  he  wrote 
his  "  Defence  of  Ehyme,"  a  monument  of  noble 
and  yet  impassioned  prose.  In  this  he  says,  "  Suf 
fer  the  world  to  enjoy  that  which  it  knows  and 
what  it  likes,  seeing  whatsoever  form  of  words  doth 
move  delight,  and  sway  the  affections  of  men,  in 
what  Scythian  sort  soever  it  be  disposed  and  ut 
tered,  that  is  true  number,  measure,  eloquence,  and 
the  perfection  of  speech."  I  think  that  Daniel's  in 
stinct  guided  him  to  a  half-truth,  which  he  as  usual 
believed  to  include  the  other  half  also.  For  I  have 
observed  that  truth  is  the  only  object  of  man's 
ardent  pursuit  of  which  every  one  is  convinced 
that  he,  and  he  alone,  has  got  the  whole. 

I  am  not  sure  that  Form,  which  is  the  artistic 
sense  of  decorum  controlling  the  coordination  of 
parts  and  ensuring  their  harmonious  subservience 
to  a  common  end,  can  be  learned  at  all,  whether  of 
the  Greeks  or  elsewhere.  I  am  not  sure  that  even 
Style  (a  lower  form  of  the  same  faculty  or  quality, 


STUDY   OF  MODERN  LANGUAGES      145 

whichever  it  be),  which  has  to  do  with  the  perfec 
tion  of  the  parts  themselves,  and  whose  triumph  it 
is  to  produce  the  greatest  effect  with  the  least  pos 
sible  expenditure  of  material,  —  I  am  not  sure  that 
even  this  can  be  taught  in  any  school.  If  Sterne 
had  been  asked  where  he  got  that  style  which, 
when  he  lets  it  alone,  is  as  perfect  as  any  that 
I  know,  if  Goldsmith  had  been  asked  where  he 
got  his,  so  equable,  so  easy  without  being  unduly 
familiar,  might  they  not  have  answered  with  the 
maiden  in  the  ballad,  — 

"  I  gat  it  in  ray  mither's  wame, 
Where  ye  '11  get  never  the  like  "  ? 

But  even  though  the  susceptibility  of  art  must 
be  inborn,  yet  skill  in  the  practical  application  of 
it  to  use  may  be  increased,  —  best  by  practice,  and 
very  far  next  best  by  example.  Assuming,  how 
ever,  that  either  Form  or  Style  is  to  be  had  with 
out  the  intervention  of  our  good  fairy,  we  can  get 
them,  or  at  least  a  wholesome  misgiving  that  they 
exist  and  are  of  serious  import,  from  the  French, 
as  Sir  Philip  Sidney  and  so  many  others  have 
done,  as  not  a  few  are  doing  now.  It  is  for  other 
and  greater  virtues  that  I  would  frequent  the 
Greeks. 

Browning,  in  the  preface  to  his  translation  of  the 
"Agamemnon,"  says  bluntly,  as  is  his  wont,  "  learn 
ing  Greek  teaches  Greek  and  nothing  else."  One 
is  sometimes  tempted  to  think  that  it  teaches  some 
other  language  far  harder  than  Greek  when  one 
tries  to  read  his  translation.  Matthew  Arnold, 
on  the  other  hand,  was  never  weary  of  insisting 


146       STUDY   OF  MODERN  LANGUAGES 

that  the  grand  style  could  be  best  learned  of  the 
Greeks,  if  not  of  them  only.  I  think  it  may  be 
taught,  or,  at  least,  fruitfully  suggested,  in  other 
ways.  Thirty  odd  years  ago  I  brought  home  with 
me  from  Nuremberg  photographs  of  Peter  Fischer's 
statuettes  of  the  twelve  apostles.  These  I  used  to 
show  to  my  pupils  and  ask  for  a  guess  at  their  size. 
The  invariable  answer  was  "  larger  than  life." 
They  were  really  about  eighteen  inches  high,  and 
this  grandiose  effect  was  wrought  by  simplicity  of 
treatment,  dignity  of  pose,  a  large  uiifretted  sweep 
of  drapery.  This  object-lesson  I  found  more  telling 
than  much  argument  and  exhortation.  I  am  glad 
that  Arnold  should  have  been  so  insistent,  he  said 
so  many  admirable  things  in  maintaining  his  thesis. 
But  I  question  the  validity  of  single  verses,  or  even 
of  three  or  four,  as  examples  of  style,  whether 
grand  or  other,  and  I  think  he  would  have  made  an 
opponent  very  uncomfortable  who  should  have  ven 
tured  to  discuss  Homer  with  as  little  knowledge  of 
Greek  as  he  himself  apparently  had  of  Old  French 
when  he  commented  on  the  "  Chanson  de  Eoland." 
He  cites  a  passage  from  the  poem  and  gives  in  a 
note  an  English  version  of  it  which  is  translated, 
not  from  the  original,  but  from  the  French  render 
ing  by  Genin  who  was  himself  on  no  very  intimate 
terms  with  the  archaisms  of  his  mother-tongue. 
With  what  he  says  of  the  poem  I  have  little  fault 
to  find.  It  is  said  with  his  usual  urbane  discretion 
and  marked  by  his  usual  steadiness  of  insight.  But 
I  must  protest  when  he  quotes  four  lines,  apt  as 
they  are  for  his  purpose,  as  an  adequate  sample,  and 


STUDY   OF  MODERN  LANGUAGES      147 

then  compares  them  with  a  most  musically  pathetic 
passage  from  Homer.  Who  is  there  that  could  es 
cape  un  diminished  from  such  a  comparison  ?  Nor 
do  I  think  that  he  appreciated  as  he  should  one 
quality  of  the  poem  which  is  essentially  Homeric  : 
I  mean  its  invigorating  energy,  the  exhilaration  of 
manhood  and  courage  that  exhales  from  it,  the  same 
that  Sidney  felt  in  "  Chevy  Chase."  I  believe  we 
should  judge  a  book  rather  by  its  total  effect  than  by 
the  adequacy  of  special  parts,  and  is  not  this  effect 
moral  as  well  as  aesthetic  ?  If  we  speak  of  style, 
surely  that  is  like  good  breeding,  not  fortuitous, 
but  characteristic,  the  key  which  gives  the  pitch 
of  the  whole  tune.  If  I  should  set  some  of  the 
epithets  with  which  Achilles  lays  Agamemnon 
about  the  ears  in  the  first  book  of  the  Iliad  in  con 
trast  with  the  dispute  between  Eoland  and  Oliver 
about  blowing  the  olifaunt,  I  am  not  sure  that 
Homer  would  win  the  prize  of  higher  breeding.  Or 
shall  I  cite  Hecuba's 

TOV  eyca  /j.f<rov  rjTrap 


The  "  Chanson  de  Roland  "  is  to  me  a  very  inter 
esting  and  inspiring  poem,  certainly  not  to  be 
named  with  the  Iliad  for  purely  literary  charm,  but 
equipped  with  the  same  moral  qualities  that  have 
made  that  poem  dearer  to  mankind  than  any  other. 
When  I  am  "  moved  more  than  with  a  trumpet,"  I 
care  not  greatly  whether  it  be  blown  by  Greek  or 
Norman  breath. 

And  this  brings  me  back  to  the  application  of 
what  I  quoted  just  now  from  Daniel.     There  seems 


148       STUDY  OF  MODERN  LANGUAGES 

to  be  a  tendency  of  late  to  value  literature  and  even 
poetry  for  their  usefulness  as  courses  of  moral  phi 
losophy  or  metaphysics,  or  as  exercises  to  put  and 
keep  the  mental  muscles  in  training.  Perhaps  the 
highest  praise  of  a  book  is  that  it  sets  us  thinking, 
but  surely  the  next  highest  praise  is  that  it  ransoms 
us  from  thought.  Milton  tells  us  that  he  thought 
Spenser  "  a  better  teacher  than  Scotus  or  Aquinas," 
but  did  he  prize  him  less  that  he  lectured  in  a  gar 
den  of  Alcina?  To  give  pleasure  merely  is  one, 
and  not  the  lowest,  function  of  whatever  deserves 
to  be  called  literature.  Culture,  which  means  the 
opening  and  refining  of  the  faculties,  is  an  excellent 
thing,  perhaps  the  best,  but  there  are  other  things 
to  be  had  of  the  Muses  which  are  also  good  in  their 
kind.  Refined  pleasure  is  refining  pleasure  too, 
and  teaches  something  in  her  way,  though  she  be 
no  proper  schooldame.  In  my  weaker  moments  I 
revert  with  a  sigh,  half  deprecation,  half  relief,  to 
the  old  notion  of  literature  as  holiday,  as 

"  The  world's  sweet  inn  from  care  and  wearisome  turmoil." 

Shall  I  make  the  ignominious  confession  that  I 
relish  Skelton's  "  Philip  Sparowe,"  pet  of  Skelton's 
Maistres  Jane,  or  parts  of  it,  inferior  though  it  be 
in  form,  almost  as  much  as  that  more  fortunate  pet 
of  Lesbia  ?  There  is  a  wonderful  joy  in  it  to  chase 
away  ennui,  though  it  may  not  thrill  our  intellect 
ual  sensibility  like  its  Latin  prototype. 

And  in  this  mobd  the  Modern  Languages  add 
largely  to  our  resources.  It  may  be  wrong  to  be 
happy  unless  in  the  grand  style,  but  it  is  perilously 


STUDY   OF  MODERN  LANGUAGES      149 

agreeable.  And  shall  we  say  that  the  literature  of 
the  last  three  centuries  is  incompetent  to  put  a 
healthy  strain  upon  the  more  strenuous  faculties  of 
the  mind  ?  That  it  does  not  appeal  to  and  satisfy 
the  mind's  loftier  desires  ?  That  Dante,  Machia- 
velli,  Montaigne,  Bacon,  Shakespeare,  Cervantes, 
Pascal,  Calderon,  Lessing,  and  he  of  TVeimar  in 
whom  Carlyle  and  so  many  others  have  found  their 
University,  —  that  none  of  these  set  our  thinking 
gear  in  motion  to  as  good  purpose  as  any  ancient 
of  them  all?  Is  it  less  instructive  to  study  the 
growth  of  modern  ideas  than  of  ancient?  Is  the 
awakening  of  the  modern  world  to  consciousness 
and  its  first  tentative,  then  fuller,  then  rapturous 
expression  of  it,  like 

—  "  the  new-abashed  nightingale 

That  stinteth  first  when  she  beginneth  sing," 

"  Till  the  fledged  notes  at  length  forsake  their  nests, 
Fluttering  in  wanton  shoals," 

less  interesting  or  less  instructive  to  us  because  it 
finds  a  readier  way  to  our  sympathy  through  a  pos 
tern  which  we  cannot  help  leaving  sometimes  on 
the  latch,  than  through  the  ceremonious  portal  of 
classical  prescription  ?  Goethe  went  to  the  root  of 
the  matter  when  he  said,  "  people  are  always  talk 
ing  of  the  study  of  the  ancients ;  yet  what  does 
this  mean  but  apply  yourself  to  the  actual  world 
and  seek  to  express  it,  since  this  is  what  the 
ancients  also  did  when  they  were  alive?"  That 
"  when  they  were  alive  "  has  an  unconscious  sar 
casm  in  it.  I  am  not  ashamed  to  confess  that  the 


150       STUDY  OF  MODERN  LANGUAGES 

first  stammerings  of  our  English  speech  have  a  pa 
thetic  charm  for  me  which  I  miss  in  the  wiser  and 
ampler  utterances  of  a  tongue,  not  only  foreign  to 
me  as  modern  languages  are  foreign,  but  thickened 
in  its  more  delicate  articulations  by  the  palsying 
touch  of  Time.  And  from  the  native  woodnotes 
of  many  modern  lands,  from  what  it  was  once  the 
fashion  to  call  the  rude  beginnings  of  their  liter 
ature,  my  fancy  carries  away,  I  think,  something  as 
precious  as  Greek  or  Latin  could  have  made  it. 
Where  shall  I  find  the  piteous  and  irreparable  pov 
erty  of  the  parvenu  so  poignantly  typified  as  in  the 
"  Lai  de  1'Oiselet  "  ?  Where  the  secret  password 
of  all  poetry  with  so  haunting  a  memory  as  in 
"  Count  Arnaldos,"  — 

"  Yo  no  digo  esta  cancion 
Sino  a  quien  conmigx)  va  "  ? 

It  is  always  wise  to  eliminate  the  personal  equa 
tion  from  our  judgments  of  literature  as  of  other 
things  that  nearly  concern  us.  But  what  is  so 
subtle,  so  elusive,  so  inapprehensible  as  this  folle 
du  logis  ?  Are  we  to  be  suspicious  of  a  book's 
good  character  in  proportion  as  it  appeals  more 
vividly  to  our  own  private  consciousness  and  ex 
perience  ?  How  are  we  to  know  to  how  many  it 
may  be  making  the  same  appeal?  Is  there  no 
resource,  then,  but  to  go  back  humbly  to  the  old 
quod  semper,  quod  ubique,  quod  ab  omnibus,  and 
to  accept  nothing  as  orthodox  literature  on  which 
the  elder  centuries  have  not  laid  their  consecrating 
hands?  The  truth  is,  perhaps,  that  in  reading 
ancient  literature  many  elements  of  false  judgment, 


STUDY   OF  MODERN  LANGUAGES      151 

partly  involved*  in  the  personal  equation,  are  inop 
erative,  or  seeni  to  be  so,  which,  when  we  read  a 
more  nearly  neighboring  literature,  it  is  wellnigh 
impossible  to  neutralize.  Did  not.  a  part  of  Mat 
thew  Arnold's  preference  for  the  verses  of  Homer, 
with  the  thunder-roll  of  which  he  sent  poor  old 
Thuroldus  about  his  business,  spring  from  a  secret 
persuasion  of  their  more  noble  harmony,  their  more 
ear-bewitching  canorousness  ?  And  yet  he  no  doubt 
recited  those  verses  in  a  fashion  which  would  have 
disqualified  them  as  barbarously  for  the  ear  of  an 
ancient  Greek  as  if  they  had  been  borrowed  of  Thu 
roldus  himself.  Do  we  not  see  here  the  personal 
fallacy's  eartip  ?  I  fancy  if  we  could  call  up  the 
old.  jongleur  and  bid  him  sing  to  us,  accompanied 
by  his  vielle,  we  should  find  in  his  verses  a  plaintive 
and  not  unimpressive  melody  such  as  so  strangely 
moves  one  in  the  untutored  song  of  the  Tuscan 
peasant  heard  afar  across  the  sun-steeped  fields 
with  its  prolonged  fondling  of  the  assonants. 
There  is  no  question  about  what  is  supreme  in 
literature.  The  difference  between  what  is  best 
and  what  is  next  best  is  immense ;  it  is  felt "  in 
stinctively  ;  it  is  a  difference  not  of  degree  but  of 
kind.  And  yet'  may  we  not  without  lese-majesty 
say  of  books  what  Ferdinand  says  of  women,  — 

"  for  several  virtues 

Have  I  liked  several  women ;  never  any 
With  so  full  soul  but  some  defect  in  her 
Did  quarrel  with  the  noblest  grace  she  owed 
And  put  it  to  the  foil "  ? 

In  growing  old  one  grows  less  fanatically  punc- 


152       STUDY  OF  MODERN  LANGUAGES 

tual  in  the  practice  of  those  austerities  of  taste 
which  make  too  constant  demands  on  our  self-de 
nial.  The  ages  have  made  up  their  minds  about 
the  ancients.  While  they  are  doing  it  about  the 
moderns  (and  they  are  sometimes  a  little  long 
about  it,  having  the  whole  of  time  before  them), 
may  we  not  allow  ourselves  to  take  an  honest 
pleasure  in  literature  far  from  the  highest,  if  you 
will,  in  point  of  form,  not  so  far  in  point  of  sub 
stance,  if  it  comply  more  kindly  with  our  mood  or 
quicken  it  with  oppugnancy  according  to  our  need  ? 
There  are  books  in  all  modern  languages  which 
fulfil  these  conditions  as  perfectly  as  any,  however 
sacred  by  their  antiquity,  can  do.  Were  the  men 
of  the  Middle  Ages  so  altogether  wrong  in  prefer 
ring  Ovid  because  his  sentiment  was'more  in  touch 
with  their  own,  so  that  he  seemed  more  neighborly  ? 
Or  the  earlier  dramatists  in  overestimating  Seneca 
for  the  same  reason  ?  Whether  it  be  from  natural 
predisposition  or  from  some  occult  influence  of  the 
time,  there  are  men  who  find  in  the  literature  of 
modern  Europe  a  stimulus  and  a  satisfaction  which 
Athens  and  Rome  deny  them.  If  these  books  do 
not  give  so  keen  an  intellectual  delight  as  the 
more  consummate  art  and  more  musical  voice  of 
Athens  enabled  her  to  give,  yet  they  establish  and 
maintain,  I  am  more  than  half  willing  to  believe, 
more  intimate  and  confiding  relations  with  us. 
They  open  new  views,  they  liberalize  us  as  only  an 
acquaintance  with  the  infinite  diversity  of  men's 
minds  and  judgments  can  do,  they  stimulate  to 
thought  or  tease  the  fancy  with  suggestion,  and  in 


STUDY   OF  MODERN  LANGUAGES       153 

short  do  fairly  well  whatever  a  good  book  is  ex 
pected  to  do,  what  ancient  literature  did  at  the 
Revival  of  Learning,  with  an  effect  like  that  which 
the  reading  of  Chapman's  Homer  had  upon  Keats. 
And  we  must  not  forget  that  the  best  result  of 
this  study  of  the  ancients  was  the  begetting  of  the 
moderns,  though  Dante  somehow  contrived  to  get 
born  with  no  help  from  the  Greek  Hera  and  little 
more  from  the  Roman  Lucina.  "  'T  is  an  unjust 
way  of  compute,"  says  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  "  to 
magnify  a  weak  head  for  some  Latin  abilities,  and 
to  undervalue  a  solid  judgment  because  he  knows 
not  the  geneaology  of  Hector." 

As  implements  of  education,  the  modern  books 
have  some  advantages  of  their  own.  I  am  told, 
and  I  believe,  that  there  is  a  considerable  number 
of  not  uningenuous  youths,  who,  whether  from 
natural  inaptitude  or  want  of  hereditary  predispo 
sition,  are  honestly  bored  by  Greek  and  Latin,  and 
who  yet  would  take  a  wholesome  and  vivifying  in 
terest  in  what  was  nearer  to  their  habitual  modes 
of  thought  and  association.  I  would  not  take  this 
for  granted,  I  would  give  the  horse  a  chance  at 
the  ancient  springs  before  I  came  to  the  conclusion 
that  he  would  not  drink.  No  doubt,  the  greater 
difficulty  of  the  ancient  languages  is  believed  by 
many  to  be  a  prime  recommendation  of  them  as 
challenging  the  more  strenuous  qualities  of  the 
mind.  I  think  there  are  grounds  for  this  belief, 
and  was  accordingly  pleased  to  learn  the  other  day 
that  my  eldest  grandson  was  taking  kindly  to  his 
Homer.  I  had  rather  he  should  choose  Greek 


154       STUDY  OF  MODERN  LANGUAGES 

than  any  modern  tongue,  and  I  say  this  as  a  hint 
that  I  am  making  allowance  for  the  personal  equa 
tion.  The  wise  gods  have  put  difficulty  between 
man  and  everything  that  is  worth  having.  But 
where  the  mind  is  of  softer  fibre,  and  less  eager  of 
emprise,  may  it  not  be  prudent  to  open  and  make 
easy  every  avenue  that  leads  to  literature,  even 
though  it  may  not  directly  lead  to  those  summits 
that  tax  the  mind  and  muscle  only  to  reward  the 
climber  at  last  with  the  repose  of  a  more  ethereal 
air? 

May  we  not  conclude  that  modern  literature,  and 
the  modern  languages  as  the  way  to  it,  should  have 
a  more  important  place  assigned  to  them  in  our 
courses  of  instruction,  assigned  to  them  moreover 
as  equals  in  dignity,  except  so  far  as  age  may 
justly  add  to  it,  and  no  longer  to  be  made  to  feel 
themselves  inferior  by  being  put  below  the  salt  ? 
That  must  depend  on  the  way  they  are  taught,  and 
this  on  the  competence  and  conscience  of  those 
who  teach  them.  Already  a  very  great  advance  has 
been  made.  The  modern  languages  have  nothing 
more  of  which  to  complain.  There  are  nearly  as 
many  professors  and  assistants  employed  in  teach 
ing  them  at  Harvard  now  as  there  were  students 
of  them  when  I  was  in  college.  Students  did  I 
say?  I  meant  boys  who  consented  to  spend  an 
hour  with  the  professor  three  times  a  week  for  the 
express  purpose  of  evading  study.  Some  of  us 
learned  so  much  that  we  could  say  "  How  do  you 
do  ? "  in  several  languages,  and  we  learned  little 
more.  The  real  impediment  was  that  we  were 


STUDY   OF  MODERN  LANGUAGES       155 

kept  forever  in  the  elementary  stage,  that  we 
could  look  forward  to  no  literature  that  would  have 
given  significance  to  the  languages  and  made  them 
beneficent.  It  is  very  different  now,  and  with 
the  number  of  teachers  the  number  of  students 
has  more  than  proportionally  increased.  And  the 
reason  is  not  far  to  seek.  The  study  has  been 
made  more  serious,  more  thorough,  and  therefore 
more  inspiring.  And  it  is  getting  to  be  under 
stood  that  as  a  training  of  the  faculties,  the  com 
parative  philology,  at  least,  of  the  modern  lan 
guages  may  be  made  as  serviceable  as  that  of  the 
ancient.  The  classical  superstitions  of  the  Eng 
lish  race  made  them  especially  behindhand  in  this 
direction,  and  it  was  long  our  shame  that  we  must 
go  to  the  Germans  to  be  taught  the  rudiments  of 
our  mother  tongue.  This  is  no  longer  true.  Anglo- 
Saxon,  Gothic,  Old  High  and  Middle  High  Ger 
man  and  Icelandic  are  all  taught,  not  only  here, 
but  in  all  our  chief  centres  of  learning.  AVhen  I 
first  became  interested  in  Old  French  I  made  a 
surprising  discovery.  If  the  books  which  I  took 
from  the  College  Library  had  been  bound  with 
gilt  or  yellow  edges,  those  edges  stuck  together  as, 
when  so  ornamented,  they  are  wont  to  do  till  the 
leaves  have  been  turned.  No  one  had  ever  opened 
those  books  before. 

"  I  was  the  first  that  ever  burst 
Into  that  silent  sea." 

Old  French  is  now  one  of  the  regular  courses  of  in 
struction,  and  not  only  is  the  language  taught,  but 
its  literature  as  well.  Remembering  what  I  reniein- 


156       STUDY   OF  MODERN  LANGUAGES 

ber,  it  seems  to  me  a  wonderful  thing  that  I  should 
have  lived  to  see  a  poem  in  Old  French  edited  by 
a  young  American  scholar  (present  here  this  even 
ing)  and  printed  in  the  journal  of  this  Society, 
a  journal  in  every  way  creditable  to  the  scholar 
ship  of  the  country.  Nor,  as  an  illustration  of  the 
same  advance  in  another  language,  should  we  for 
get  Dr.  Fay's  admirable  Concordance  of  the  "  Di- 
vina  Commedia."  But  a  more  gratifying  illustra 
tion  than  any  is  the  existence  and  fruitful  activity 
of  this  Association  itself,  and  this  select  concourse 
before  me  which  brings  scholars  together  from  all 
parts  of  the  land,  to  stimulate  them  by  personal 
commerce  with  men  of  kindred  pursuits,  and  to 
unite  so  many  scattered  energies  in  a  single  force 
controlled  by  a  common  and  invigorated  purpose. 

We  have  every  reason  to  congratulate  ourselves 
on  the  progress  the  modern  languages  have  made 
as  well  in  academic  as  in  popular  consideration. 
They  are  now  taught  (as  they  could  not  formerly 
be  taught)  in  a  way  that  demands  toil  and  thougjit 
of  the  student,  as  Greek  and  Latin,  and  they  only, 
used  to  be  taught,  and  they  also  open  the  way  to 
higher  intellectual  joys,  to  pastures  new  and  not 
the  worse  for  being  so,  as  Greek  and  Latin,  and 
they  only,  used  to  do.  Surely  many-sidedness  is  the 
very  essence  of  culture,  and  it  matters  less  what  a 
man  learns  than  how  he  learns  it.  The  day  will 
come,  nay,  it  is  dawning  already,  when  it  will  be 
understood  that  the  masterpieces  of  whatever  lan 
guage  are  not  to  be  classed  by  an  arbitrary  stand 
ard,  but  stand  on  the  same  level  in  virtue  of  being 


STUDY  OF  MODERN  LANGUAGES   •  157 

masterpieces ;  that  thought,  imagination,  and  fancy 
may  make  even  a  patois  acceptable  to  scholars  ; 
that  the  poets  of  all  climes  and  of  all  ages  "  sing 
to  one  clear  harp  in  divers  tones;"  and  that  the 
masters  of  prose  and  the  masters  of  verse  in  all 
tongues  teach  the  same  lesson  and  exact  the  same 
fee. 

I  'began  by  saying  that  1  had  no  wish  to  renew 
the  Battle  of  the  Books.  I  cannot  bring  myself  to 
look  upon  the  literatures  of  the  ancient  and  mod 
ern  worlds  as  antagonists,  but  rather  as  friendly 
rivals  in  the  effort  to  tear  as  many  as  may  be 
from  the  barbarizing  plutolatry  which  seems  to 
be  so  rapidly  supplanting  the  worship  of  what 
alone  is  lovely  and  enduring.  No,  they  are  not 
antagonists,  but  by  their  points  of  disparity,  of 
likeness,  or  contrast,  they  can  be  best  understood, 
perhaps  understood  only  through  each  other.  The 
scholar  must  have  them  both,  but  may  not  he  who 
has  not  leisure  to  be  a  scholar  find  profit  even  in 
the  lesser  of  the  two,  if  that  only  be  attainable  ? 
Have  I  admitted  that  one  is  the  lesser  ?  O  matre 
pulchra  flia  pulchrior  is  perhaps  what  I  should 
say  here. 

If  I  did  not  rejoice  in  the  wonderful  advance 
made  in  the  comparative  philology  of  the  modern 
languages,  I  should  not  have  the  face  to  be  stand 
ing  here.  But  neither  should  I  if  I  shrank  from 
saying  what  I  believed  to  be  the  truth,  whether  here 
or  elsewhere.  I  think  that  the  purely  linguistic 
side  in  the  teaching  of  them  seems  in  the  way  to 
get  more  than  its  fitting  share.  I  insist  only  that 


158       STUDY  OF  MODERN  LANGUAGES 

in  our  college  courses  this  should  be  a  separate 
study,  and  that,  good  as  it  is  in  itself,  it  should,  in 
the  scheme  of  general  instruction,  be  restrained  to 
its  own  function  as  the  guide  to  something  better. 
And  that  something  better  is  Literature.  Let  us 
rescue  ourselves  from  what  Milton  calls  "  these 
grammatic  flats  and  shallows."  The  blossoms  of 
language  have  certainly  as  much  value  as  its  roots ; 
for  if  the  roots  secrete  food  and  thereby  transmit 
life  to  the  plant,  yet  the  joyous  consummation  of 
that  life  is  in  the  blossoms,  which  alone  bear  the 
seeds  that  distribute  and  renew  it  in  other  growths. 
Exercise  is  good  for  the  muscles  of  mind  and  to 
keep  it  well  in  hand  for  work,  but  the  true  end  of 
Culture  is  to  give  it  play,  a  thing  quite  as  needful. 
What  I  would  urge,  therefore,  is  that  no  invidi 
ous  distinction  should  be  made  between  the  Old 
Learning  and  the  New,  but  that  students,  due 
regard  being  had  to  their  temperaments  and  facul 
ties,  should  be  encouraged  to  take  the  course  in 
modern  languages  as  being  quite  as  good  in  point 
of  mental  discipline  as  any  other,  if  pursued  with 
the  same  thoroughness  and  to  the  same  end.  And 
that  end  is  Literature,  for  there  language  first 
attains  to  a  full  consciousness  of  its  powers  and 
to  the  delighted  exercise  of  them.  Literature  has 
escaped  that  doom  of  Shinar  which  made  our 
Association  possible,  and  still  everywhere  speaks  in 
the  universal  tongue  of  civilized  man.  And  it  is 
only  through  this  record  of  Man's  joys  and  sor 
rows,  of  his  aspirations  and  failures,  of  his  thought, 
his  speculation,  and  his  dreams,  that  we  can  become 


STUDY   OF  MODERN  LANGUAGES      159 

complete  men,  and  learn  both  what  he  is  and  what 
he  may  be,  for  it  is  the  unconscious  autobiography 
of  mankind.  And  has  no  page  been  added  to  it 
since  the  last  ancient  classic  author  laid  down  his 
pen? 


THE  PROGRESS  OF  THE  WORLD.1 

1886. 

As  at  noon  every  day  the  captain  of  a  ship  tries 
to  learn  his  whereabouts  of  the  sun,  that  he  may 
know  how  much  nearer  he  is  to  his  destined  port, 
and  how  far  he  may  have  been  pushed  away  from 
his  course  by  the  last  gale  or  drifted  from  it  by 
unsuspected  currents,  so  on  board  this  ship  of  ours, 
The  Earth,  in  which  that  abstract  entity  we  call 
The  World  is  a  passenger,  we  strive  to  ascertain, 
from  time  to  time,  with  such  rude  instruments  as 
we  possess,  what  progress  we  have  made  and  in 
what  direction.  It  is  rather  by  a  kind  of  dead- 
reckoning  than  by  taking  the  height  of  the  Sun  of 
Righteousness,  which  should  be  our  seamark,  that 
we  accomplish  this,  for  such  celestial  computations 
are  gone  somewhat  out  of  fashion.  It  is  only  a  few 
scholars  and  moralists  in  their  silent  arid  solitary 
observatories  that  any  longer  make  account  of 
them.  We  mostly  put  faith  in  our  statisticians, 
and  the  longer  they  make  their  columns  of  figures, 
the  bigger  their  sums  of  population,  of  exports  and 
imports,  and  of  the  general  output  of  fairy-gold, 

1  This  paper  was  written  for  an  introduction  to  a  work  entitled 
The  World's  Progress  (published  by  Messrs.  Gately  &  O' Gorman, 
Boston),  in  which  the  advance  in  various  departments  of  intel 
lectual  and  material  activity  was  described  and  illustrated. 


THE  PROGRESS   OF  THE    WORLD       161 

the  more  stupidly  are  we  content.  Nor  are  we 
over-nice  in  considering  the  direction  of  our  pro 
gress,  if  only  we  be  satisfied  that  to-day  we  are  no 
longer  where  we  were  yesterday.  Yet  the  course 
of  this  moral  thing  we  call  the  World  is  controlled 
by  laws  as  certain  and  immutable  and  by  influences 
as  subtle  as  those  which  govern  with  such  exquisite 
precision  that  of  the  physical  thing  we  call  The 
Earth,  could  we  only  find  them  out.  It  has  ever 
been  the  business  of  wise  men  to  trace  and  to  illus 
trate  them,  of  prudent  men  to  allow  for  and  to  seek 
an  alliance  with  them,  of  good  men  to  conform  their 
lives  with  them. 

Between  those  observations  taken  on  shipboard 
and  ours  there  is  also  this  other  difference,  that 
those  refer  always  to  a  fixed,  external  standard, 
while  for  these  the  standard  is  internal  and  fluctu 
ating,  so  that  the  point  toward  which  The  World 
is  making  progress  shall  seem  very  different  accord 
ing  to  the  temperament,  the  fortunes,  nay,  even  the 
very  mood  or  age  of  the  observer.  It  may  be  re 
marked  that  Mr.  Gladstone  and  Lord  Tennyson 
are  very  far  from  being  at  one  in  their  judgment 
of  it.  Old  men  in  general  love  not  change,  and  are 
suspicious  of  it;  while  young  men  are  impatient  of 
present  conditions  and  of  the  slowness  of  movement 
to  escape  from  them.  Yet  change  is  the  very  con 
dition  of  our  being  and  thriving,  deliberation  and 
choice  that  of  all  secure  foothold  on  the  shaky 
stepping-stones  by  which  we  cross  the  torrent  of 
Circumstances.  Is  it  in  the  power  of  any  man, 
whatever  his  age,  to  arrive  at  that  equilibrium  of 


162   THE  PROGRESS  OF  THE  WORLD 

temper  and  judgment  without  which  no  even  prob 
able  estimate  of  where  we  are  and  whither  we  are 
tending  is  possible?  Certainly  no  such  trustworthy 
estimate  can  be  deduced  from  our  inward  conscious 
ness  or  from  our  outward  environments;  nor  can 
we,  with  all  our  statistics,  make  ourselves  independ 
ent  of  the  inextinguishable  lamps  of  heaven.  We 
pile  our  figures  one  upon  another,  even  as  the 
builders  of  Babel  their  bricks,  and  the  heaven  we 
hope  to  attain  is  as  far  away  as  ever.  It  is  moral 
forces  that,  more  than  all  others,  govern  the  direc 
tion  and  regulate  the  advance  of  our  affairs,  and 
these  forces  are  as  calculable  as  the  Trade  Winds 
or  the  Gulf  Stream. 

And  yet,  though  this  be  so,  one  of  the  greatest 
lessons  taught  by  History  is  the  close  relation  be 
tween  the  moral  and  the  physical  well-being  of 
man.  The  case  of  the  Ascetics  makes  but  a  seem 
ing  exception  to  this  law,  for  they  voluntarily  de 
nied  themselves  that  bodily  comfort  which  is  the 
chief  object  of  human  endeavor,  and  renunciation 
is  the  wholesomest  regimen  of  the  soul.  If  we 
cannot  strike  a  precise  balance  and  say  that  the 
World  is  better  because  it  is  richer  now  than  it 
was  three  centuries,  or  even  half  a  century,  ago, 
we  may  at  least  comfort  ourselves  with  the  belief 
that  this,  if  not  demonstrably  true,  is  more  than 
probable,  and  that  there  is  less  curable  unhappi- 
ness,  less  physical  suffering,  and  therefore  less 
crime,  than  heretofore.  Yet  there  is  no  gain  with 
out  corresponding  loss.  If  the  sum  of  happiness 
be  greater,  yet  the  amount  falling  to  each  of  us  in 


THE  PROGRESS   OF  THE    WORLD       163 

the  division  of  it  seems  to  be  less.  It  is  noteworthy 
that  literature,  as  it  becomes  more  modern,  becomes 
also  more  melancholy,  and  that  he  who  keeps  most 
constantly  to  the  minor  key  of  hopelessness,  or 
strikes  the  deepest  note  of  despair,  is  surest  of  at 
least  momentary  acclaim.  Nay,  do  not  some 
sources  of  happiness  flow  less  full  or  cease  to  flow 
as  settlement  and  sanitation  advance,  even  as  the 
feeders  of  our  streams  are  dried  by  the  massacre 
of  our  forests?  We  cannot  have  a  new  boulevard 
in  Florence  unless  at  sacrifice  of  those  ancient  city- 
walls  in  which  inspiring  memories  had  for  so  many 
ages  built  their  nests  and  reared  their  broods  of 
song.  Did  not  the  plague,  brooded  and  hatched 
in  those  smotherers  of  fresh  air,  the  slits  that  thor- 
oughfared  the  older  town,  give  us  the  Decameron? 
And  was  the  price  too  high?  We  cannot  widen 
and  ventilate  the  streets  of  Rome  without  grievous 
wrong  to  the  city  that  we  loved,  and  yet  it  is  well 
to  remember  that  this  city  too  had  built  itself  out 
of  and  upon  the  ruins  of  that  nobler  Rome  which 
gave  it  all  the  wizard  hold  it  had  on  our  imagina 
tion.  The  Social  Science  Congress  rejoices  in 
changes  that  bring  tears  to  the  eyes  of  the  painter 
and  the  poet.  Alas  !  we  cannot  have  a  world  made 
expressly  for  Mr.  Ruskin,  nor  keep  it  if  we  could, 
more  's  the  pity!  Are  we  to  confess,  then,  that  the 
World  grows  less  lovable  as  it  grows  more  conven 
ient  and  comfortable  ?  that  beauty  flees  before  the 
step  of  the  Social  Reformer  as  the  wild  pensioners 
of  Xature  before  the  pioneers  ?  that  the  lion  will  lie 
down  with  the  lamb  sooner  than  picturesqueness 


164   THE  PROGRESS  OF  THE  WORLD 

with  health  and  prosperity?  Morally,  no  doubt, 
we  are  bound  to  consider  the  Greatest  Good  of  the 
Greatest  Number,  but  there  is  something  in  us,  va- 
gula,  blandula,  that  refuses,  and  rightly  refuses, 
to  be  Benthamized ;  that  asks  itself  in  a  timid  whis 
per,  "Is  it  so  certain,  then,  that  the  Greatest  Good 
is  also  the  Highest?  and  has  it  been  to  the  Greatest 
or  to  the  Smallest  Number  that  man  has  been  most 
indebted?"  For  myself,  while  I  admit,  because  I 
cannot  help  it,  certain  great  and  manifest  improve 
ments  in  the  general  well-being,  I  cannot  stifle  a 
suspicion  that  the  Modern  Spirit,  to  whose  tune 
we  are  marching  so  cheerily,  may  have  borrowed 
of  the  Pied  Piper  of  Hamelin  the  instrument 
whence  he  draws  such  bewitching  music.  Having 
made  this  confession,  I  shall  do  my  best  to  write 
in  a  becoming  spirit  the  Introduction  that  is  asked 
of  me,  and  to  make  my  antiquated  portico  as  little 
imharmonious  as  I  can  with  the  modern  building  to 
which  it  leads. 

But,  before  we  enter  upon  a  consideration  of  the 
Progress  of  the  World,  we  must  take  a  glance  at 
that  of  the  Globe  on  whose  surface  what  we  call 
the  World  came  into  being,  rests,  and  has  grown 
to  what  we  see.  This  Globe  is  not,  as  we  are  in 
formed,  a  perfect  sphere,  but  slightly  flattened  at 
the  poles ;  and  in  like  manner  this  World  is  by  no 
means  a  perfect  world,  though  it  be  not  quite  so 
easy,  as  in  the  other  case,  to  say  where  or  why  it  is 
not.  For  it  there  is  no  moon-mirror  in  which  to 
study  its  own  profile.  Perhaps  it  would  be  wise 
to  ask  ourselves  now  and  then  whether  the  fault 


THE  PROGRESS   OF  THE    WORLD       165 

may  not  be  in  the  nature  of  man,  after  all,  rather 
than  anywhere  else.  So  far  as  he  is  a  social  ani 
mal,  that  is,  an  animal  liable  in  various  ways  to 
make  his  neighbor  uncomfortable,  it  is  certainly 
prudent  to  remember  always  that,  though  his  nat 
ural  impulses  «iay  be  restrained,  or  guided,  or  even 
improved,  yet  that  they  are  always  there  and  ready 
to  take  the  bit  in  their  teeth  at  the  first  chance  which 
offers.  This  might  save  us  a  pretty  long  bill  for 
quack  nostrums,  since,  though  no  astronomer  has 
ever  volunteered  to  rectify  the  Earth's  outline, 
there  is  hardly  a  man  who  does  not  fancy  that  the 
"World  would  become  and  continue  just  what  it 
should  be,  if  only  his  patent  specific  could  once  be 
fairly  tried.  Quacks  of  genius  like  Rousseau  have 
sometimes  persuaded  to  the  experiment  of  their 
panaceas,  but  always  with  detriment  to  the  pa 
tient's  constitution.  We  are  long  in  learning  the 
lesson  of  Medea's  cauldron. 

The  Earth,  fortunately,  is  beyond  the  reach  of 
our  wisdom,  and,  like  the  other  shining  creatures 
of  God,  whirls  her  sphere  and  brings  about  her 
appointed  seasons  in  happy  obedien?e  to  laws  for 
which  she  is  not  responsible  and  which  she  cannot 
tinker.  Beginning  as  a  nebulous  nucleus  of  fiery 
gases,  a  luminous  thistle-down  blown  about  the 
barren  wastes  of  space,  then  slowly  shrinking,  com 
pacting,  growing  solid,  and  cooling  at  the  rind,  our 
planet  was  forced  into  a  system  with  others  like  it, 
some  smaller,  some  vastly  greater  than  itself,  and, 
in  its  struggle  with  overmastering  forces,  having 
the  Moon  wrenched  from  it  to  be  its  night -lamp 


166        THE  PROGRESS   OF  THE    WORLD 

and  the  timer  of  its  tides.  Then  slowly,  slowly,  it 
became  capable  of  sustaining  living  organisms,  ris 
ing  by  long  and  infinitesimal  gradations,  symbol 
ically  rehearsed  again,  it  is  said,  by  the  child  in 
embryo,  from  the  simplest  to  the  more  complex, 
from  merely  animated  matter  to  matter  informed 
with  Soul,  and,  in  Man,  sometimes  controlled  by 
reason.  The  imagination  grows  giddy  as  it  looks 
downwards  along  the  rounds  of  the  ladder  lost, 
save  a  short  stretch  of  it,  in  distance  below,  by 
which  life  has  climbed  from  the  zoophyte  to  Plato, 
to  Newton,  to  Michael  Angelo,  to  Shakespeare. 
During  the  inconceivable  aeons  implied  in  these 
processes,  the  Earth  has  gone  through  many  vicis 
situdes,  unrecorded  save  in  the  gigantic  runes  of 
Geology,  the  graffiti  of  Pluto  and  Neptune,  \vhich 
man,  having  painfully  fashioned  a  key  to  them,  is 
spelling  out  letter  by  letter,  arranging  as  syllables, 
as  words,  as  sentences,  and  at  last  reading  as  co 
herent  narrative.  Every  one  of  these  records  is  the 
mortuary  inscription  of  an  Epoch  or  a  Cycle,  but 
the  last  word  of  every  one  is  Resurgam.  They 
point  backwards  to  such  endless  files  of  centuries 
that  the  poor  six  thousand  years  of  our  hieratic 
reckoning  are  dwindled  to  a  hair-breadth,  and  our 
students  of  the  rocks  and  stars,  like  the  drunken 
man  of  Esdras,  disdain  the  smaller  change  of  tem 
poral  computation,  and  rattle  off  their  millions  as 
carelessly  as  Congress  in  dealing  with  our  Na 
tional  strongbox.  Nor  has  this  sudden  accession 
of  secular  wealth  made  them  any  more  careful  of 
the  humbler  interests  of  their  neighbors  than  it  is 


THE  PROGRESS   OF  THE    WORLD       167 

wont  to  make  other  nouveaux  riches.  A  malig 
nant  astronomer  has  lately  done  his  best  to  prove 
that  the  sun's  stock  of  fuel  cannot  hold  out  more 
than  seventeen  millions  of  years.  Is,  then,  that 
assurance  of  an  earthly  immortality  which  has  hith 
erto  sustained  poets  through  cold  and  hunger  and 
Philistine  indifference,  to  be  fobbed  off  at  last  with 
so  beggarly  a  pittance  as  this?  Let  us  hope  for 
better  things. 

Though  these  memories  of  the  rocks  and  moun 
tains  and  ocean-beds  seem  to  belittle  and  abbreviate 
man,  yet  it  is  nothing  so;  for,  till  he  came,  the 
universe,  so  far  as  we  can  explore  and  know  it,  had 
neither  eyes,  nor  ears,  nor  tongue,  nor  any  dimmest 
consciousness  of  its  own  being.  This  antiquity 
has  been  the  gift  of  modern  science ;  and  the  brain 
of  man  has  been  the  hour-glass  that  gave  to  these 
regardless  sands  of  Time,  running  to  waste  through 
the  dreaming  fingers  of  idle  Oblivion,  the  measure 
and  standard  of  their  own  duration.  It  is  the  cun 
ning  of  man  that  has  delineated  the  great  dial-plate 
of  the  heavens;  his  mind  that  looks  before  and 
after,  and  can  tell  the  unwitting  stars  where  they 
were  at  any  moment  of  the  unmeasured  past,  where 
they  will  be  at  any  moment  of  the  unmeasurable  fu 
ture.  Though  he  cannot  loose  the  bands  of  Orion, 
he  can  weigh  them  to  the  uttermost  scruple ;  though 
he- cannot  bind  the  sweet  influences  of  the  Pleiades, 
he  knows  upon  what  eyes  of  mortal  men  they  are 
shed,  and  at  what  moment,  though  by  himself  un 
seen.  Shut  in  his  study,  he  can  look  at  the  New 
Moon  with  lovers  at  the  Antipodes.  If  Science  have 


168       THE  PROGRESS   OF  THE   WORLD 

made  men  seem  ephemeral  as  midges,  she  has  con 
ferred  a  great  benefit  on  humanity  by  endowing 
collective  Man  with  something  of  that  longaeval 
dignity  which  she  has  compelled  the  individual  to 
renounce.  He  is  no  longer  the  creature  of  yester 
day,  but  the  crowning  product  and  heir  of  ages  so 
countless  as  to  make  Time  a  sharer  in  the  grandeur 
of  that  immensity  to  which  Astronomy  has  dilated 
the  bounds  of  Space.  And  who  shall  reproach  her 
with  having  put  far  away  from  us  the  homely  and 
neighborly  heaven  of  unlettered  faith,  when  she 
has  opened  such  a  playground  for  the  outings  of 
speculation,  and  noted  in  her  guide-book  so  many 
spacious  inns  for  the  refreshment  of  the  disembod 
ied  spirit  on  its  travels,  so  many  and  so  wondrous 
magnolia  for  its  curiosity  and  instruction  ?  To  me 
it  seems  not  unreasonable  to  find  a  reinforcement  of 
optimism,  a  renewal  of  courage  and  hope,  in  the 
modern  theory  that  man  has  mounted  to  what  he  is 
from  the  lowest  step  of  potentiality,  through  toil 
some  grades  of  ever-expanding  existence,  even 
though  it  have  been  by  a  spiral  stairway,  mainly 
dark  or  dusty,  with  loopholes  at  long  intervals 
only,  and  these  granting  but  a  narrow  and  one-sided 
view.  The  protoplasmic  germ  to  which  it  was  in 
calculable  promotion  to  become  a  stomach,  has  it 
not,  out  of  the  resources  with  which  God  had  en 
dowed  it,  been  able  to  develop  the  brain  of  Darwin, 
who  should  write  its  biography?  Even  Theology 
is  showing  signs  that  she  is  getting  ready  to  ex 
change  a  man  who  fell  in  Adam  for  a  man  risen 
out  of  nonentity  and  still  rising  through  that  aspir- 


THE  PROGRESS   OF  THE    WORLD       169 

ing  virtue  in  his  veins  which  is  spurred  onwards 
and  upwards  by  the  very  inaccessibility  of  what  he 
sees  above  him. 

But  I  have  kept  Man  cooling  his  heels  too  long 
in  these  antechambers  of  his  larger  life.  He  be 
comes  more  interesting  to  us,  and  we  are  more  will 
ing  to  admit  his  claim  of  kinship  with  us,  in  pro 
portion  as  he  has  entered  upon  a  larger  share  of 
his  inheritance.  His  condition  of  nonage  and  ap 
prenticeship  was  unconscionably  long;  but  there 
was  no  escape,  since  it  was  Nature  that  had  drawn 
his  indentures.  Till  he  had  learned  to  write,  what 
we  seem  to  know  of  him  is  hypothetical  merely, 
and  he  was  dull  at  his  pothooks  and  trammels. 
The  book  which  you  have  before  you  enables  you 
to  see,  in  brief  but  sufficient  compendium,  the  ad 
vances  made  by  mankind  in  the  various  lines  of 
human  enterprise  and  development,  which,  leading 
away  from  a  single  centre,  gradually  enlarge  the 
circumference  of  his  activity  and  the  horizon  of 
his  intelligent  desires  and  hopes.  We  begin  with 
Man  where  our  records  of  him  begin,  in  the  rude 
memorials  of  himself  he  has  unwittingly  left  us. 
Fancy  and  conjecture  may  find  ample  and  instruc 
tive  entertainment  if  they  try  to  conceive  him  as  he 
was  at  first,  —  a  dweller  in  the  natural  shelter  of 
caverns,  fashioning,  on  rainy  days,  spear-heads  and 
arrow-tips  of  flint,  or  fishing-hooks  of  the  bones  of 
the  very  prey  that  was  to  be  their  victim.  Perhaps 
the  need  of  even  a  natural  roof  implies  that  he  had 
already  learned,  as  no  other  animal  has  ever  learned, 
to  cover  nature's  waterproof  suit  with  some  kind 


170       THE  PROGRESS   OF  THE    WORLD 

of  clothing.  Next,  we  follow  him  as  he  emerges 
from  the  isolation  of  Family  to  the  wider  relations 
of  Tribe,  Nation,  Community,  State.  Before  even 
the  simplest  of  these  latter  organizations  could  be 
possible,  he  must  have  invented  language;  and  this 
could  have  been  no  improvisation.  Indeed,  would 
we  conceive  how  slow  his  progress  must  have  been, 
we  have  only  to  consider  the  multitude  of  inven 
tions,  like  the  wheel,  the  lever,  the  bow,  the  sling, 
every  one  of  which  a  child  now  uses  —  perhaps  by 
hereditary  instinct  —  with  as  little  forethought  as 
if  they  were  natural  limbs.  Yet  all  these  and 
countless  others  waited  till  a  genius  came  along  to 
make  them  servants  of  man ;  and  surely  Nature  is 
sparing  of  genius.  He  was  a  Kepler  who  first 
counted  the  fingers  of  one  hand;  he  a  Galileo  who 
added  those  of  the  other,  and  gave  us  the  decimal 
system;  he  a  Newton  who  divined  the  possibility 
of  numbering  his  toes  also  and  arriving  at  the 
score.  By  arid  by  another  great  inventor  devised 
the  tally,  and  property  in  flocks  and  herds,  the  first 
riches,  became  secure  because  numerable  and  mat 
ter  of  record.  Nay,  if  we  consider  that  every  man 
we  meet  walking  is  a  miracle  (for  it  is  nothing  less 
than  this  so  to  evade  the  law  of  gravitation  as  to 
balance  himself  on  one  foot  at  every  step),  and  that 
every  infant  must  give  two  or  three  years  to  the 
acquiring  of  this  art,  we  shall  the  more  easily  rec 
oncile  ourselves  with  the  prolonged  periods  of  prep 
aration  and  training  which  our  present  civilization 
presupposes. 

Pope  has  fancied  man  a  pupil  of  the  lower  ani- 


THE  PROGRESS   OF  THE    WORLD       171 

mals,  learning  of  the  little  nautilus  to  sail ;  and  no 
doubt  it  is  a  fruitful  characteristic  of  man  that  he 
is  clever  enough  to  take  and  to  profit  by  those  nods 
and  winks  that  are  thrown  away  upon  the  blind 
horses  of  creation.  These,  too,  —  if  we  are  to 
suppose  him  to  stand  in  need  of  them,  —  he  is  ca 
pable  of  expanding  and  perfecting  till  the  original 
germ  be  lost  in  the  medley  of  variation  and  accre 
tion.  This  skill  in  emendation,  this  faculty  of  im 
proving  on  his  models  and  achievements,  is  what 
happily  distinguishes  him.  The  bee  builds  as  he 
began  in  Eden,  —  a  perfect  architect  from  the  first, 
—  only  accommodating  the  structure  of  his  cells  to 
circumstances  when  he  cannot  help  it.  The  nau 
tilus  spreads  his  cobweb  sail  as  the  first  navigator 
of  his  race  spread  his.  The  tradition  of  the  natural 
caverns  in  which  his  ancestor  found  shelter  and 
warmth  may  have  taught  the  troglodyte  to  burrow 
in  cliffs  of  softer  stone;  but  the  first  tree  under 
which  man  sought  refuge  from  a  shower  must  have 
read  him  a  more  convincing  lecture  on  the  advan 
tages  of  a  permanent  roof  than  any  that  Yitruvius 
or  Palladio  could  have  furnished  him.  The  first 
tree-trunk  he  saw  floating  downstream  might  well 
be  his  earliest  lesson  in  shipbuilding;  the  first 
wooden  bowl  dropped  into  the  brook  by  a  careless 
girl  might  suggest  to  some  master  mind  the  advan 
tage  of  hollowing  the  log,  to  give  it  buoyancy,  bal 
ance,  and  capacity.  But,  from  the  mere  concep 
tion  of  shelter,  man  was  beckoned  onwards  by  the 
longing  to  complete  and  crown  use  with  beauty, 
till,  from  the  seed  of  the  wattled  hovel,  sprang  at 


172        THE  PROGRESS   OF  THE    WORLD 

last,  in  supreme  loveliness,  the  Parthenon  and  the 
Cathedral,  in  architrave  or  arch,  still  filially  renew 
ing  the  idealized  features  of  the  primitive  ancestor. 
The  rude  dugout  or  coracle  of  the  primaeval  mar 
iner  has  grown  into  a  palace  on  the  sea,  a  city  011 
the  inconstant  billows  dancing,  that  carries  its 
sails  and  fair  winds  in  its  own  entrails,  and  pushes 
prevailingly  against  the  very  breast  of  the  storm. 

Man  is  the  only  animal  that  has  given  proof  of 
invention  in  the  highest  sense,  that  is,  not  as  a 
mere  fence  against  the  blasts  of  discomfort,  or  as 
a  lightener  of  his  drudgery,  but  as  a  minister  of 
beauty;  the  only  one  who  of  Nature's  chains  has 
made  his  ornaments,  and  of  her  obstacles  the  step 
ping-stones  of  his  advance.  Other  creatures  show, 
or  seem  to  show,  pleasure  in  bright  colors,  or  sen 
sibility  to  modulated  sounds;  but  only  Man  has 
combined  and  harmonized  those  into  picture  and 
these  into  music.  The  eye  of  the  ox  is  a  placid  mir 
ror  of  the  meadow  into  which  he  gazes,  unconscious 
as  the  dull  pool  that  images  the  magnificence  of 
sky  and  mountain  or  the  various  grace  of  growth 
upon  its  borders.  The  eye  of  man  is  a  window, 
not  to  the  sense  only,  but  to  the  soul  behind  the 
sense ;  it  has  memory  and  desire,  nor  will  let  him 
rest  till  he  have  reproduced  and  made  permanent 
some  semblance  of  what  engaged  his  fancy  or  wak 
ened  his  imagination.  Even  among  cave-dwellers, 
we  find,  scratched  on  the  bones  from  which  they 
had  gnawed  the  flesh,  outlines  of  the  mastodon  and 
of  a  combat  of  stags,  —  crude  endeavors  after  art, 
deeply  suggestive,  in  their  intention,  of  some  im- 


THE  PROGRESS   OF  THE    WORLD       173 

possible  Snyders  or  Landseer   beguiling  the   im 
pulse  he  could  neither  stifle  nor  satisfy. 

Though  he  cannot  create,  man  reflects  the  Cre 
ative  Power  through  his  sense  of  Form,  Order,  and 
Proportion,  —  the  abstractions  by  which  that  Power 
is  most  vividly  manifested.  He  has  the  supreme 
faculty  of  organization.  Multiply  the  bison  in 
definitely,  and  the  result  is  still  a  herd :  multiply 
man,  and  he  organizes  himself,  arranging  himself, 
more  or  less  rudely,  by  some  process  of  moral 
gravitation,  in  a  form  of  polity,  or  groping  clum 
sily  in  search  thereof ;  he  cannot  long  remain  mob, 
even  if  he  would.  Other  creatures  are  endowed 
with  that  kind  of  crystallized  reason  which  we  call 
instinct.  In  the  highest  types  of  man  alone  does 
reason  continue  ductile  and  versatile,  enabling  him 
to  supplement  or  multiply  his  natural  organs  and 
powers  by  artificial  contrivances,  and  thus  to  real 
ize  the  dreams  and  fables  of  his  remote  progeni 
tors.  We  write  no  more  fairy  tales,  because  the 
facts  of  our  every-day  lives  are  more  full  of  mar 
vel  than  they.  Other  creatures  have  curiosity; 
but  it  stops  short  in  the  vagueness  of  wonder,  nor 
pushes  on,  like  that  of  jnan,  to  discovery.  Other 
animals  stare ;  man  looks.  Many  are  gregarious, 
some  social,  and  some  —  as  ants,  bees,  and  beavers 
—  dwell  in  communities  and  socialize  their  labor ; 
man  only  has  devised  a  society  which,  imperfect  in 
many  ways  and  wasteful  as  it  is,  contains  within 
itself  the  elements  of  growth  and  amelioration.  It 
is  a  suggestive  fact  that,  within  the  historic  period, 
no  new  animal  has  been  tamed  to  the  service  or 


174       THE  PROGRESS   OF  THE   WORLD 

companionship  of  man.  Only  he  can  record  his 
memory,  and  so  fund  his  experience  for  the  benefit 
of  his  posterity ;  only  he  is  capable  of  being  bored, 
—  the  sharpest  spur  to  enterprise,  to  action,  to  the 
contempt  of  life.  Captaincy  among  the  lower  ani 
mals  means  superior  strength  and  the  cheap  courage 
that  comes  of  it :  among  men  it  means  brains,  it 
means,  above  all,  character;  and  they  have  con 
trived,  by  making  Law  supreme,  to  make  all  men 
alike  strong.  Dogs  know  when  they  have  done 
wrong,  but  their  moral  standard  is  the  displeasure 
of  their  master ;  man  has  invented,  or,  at  any  rate, 
developed,  conscience,  —  the  only  infallible  detec 
tive,  the  only  impeccable  judge,  the  only  execu 
tioner  with  whom  no  reprieve  avails.  The  endeavor 
has  been  made  to  distinguish  man  from  the  brutes 
by  defining  him  as  the  only  animal  that  laughs, 
that  has  learned  the  uses  of  fire,  and  what  not. 
We  might  be  tempted  to  call  him  the  only  animal 
who  thinks  he  is  thinking  when  he  is  merely  rumi 
nating.  But  I  conceive  his  truer  and  higher  dis 
tinction  to  be  that  he  alone  has  the  gift,  or,  rather, 
is  laid  under  the  ennobling  necessity,  of  conceiv 
ing  and  formulating  an  ideal;  which  means  that  he 
alone  may  be  the  servant  and  steward  of  the  Divine 
Beauty. 

In  these  volumes  the  reader  will  find  all  that  he 
can  reasonably  wish  to  know  about  prehistoric  or 
historic  man,  and  about  the  floating  globe  on  which 
he  dwells,  treated  at  sufficient  length  by  competent 
persons,  each  dealing  with  that  part  of  the  subject 
to  which  his  special  studies  had  been  devoted. 


THE  PROGRESS   OF  THE    WORLD       175 

He  will  learn  how  far  and  in  what  directions  man 
has  advanced,  how  much  of  his  inheritance  he  has 
subdued  and  occupied,  and  with  what  results.  He 
will  learn  what  is  meant  by  the  familiar  phrase 
that  man  is  "the  heir  of  all  the  ages,"  and  how 
nobly  exacting  are  the  duties  and  privileges  implied 
in  it.  He  will  observe  how  certain  races  have 
been  endowed  with  special  qualities  and  aptitudes ; 
as,  the  Greeks  for  art,  in  its  most  widely  inclusive 
sense;  the  Jews,  for  commerce  and  (strange  para 
dox)  for  the  higher  divinations  of  the  soul;  the 
Romans,  for  civil  and  military  administration; 
our  own,  for  polity  and  the  planting  of  colonies. 
He  will  trace  back  astronomy  to  Chaldaea,  theog- 
ony  to  Babylonia,  and  metaphysical  speculation  to 
India.  In  certain  directions  he  will  find  no  ad 
vance,  as  in  literature  and  sculpture,  since  the 
Greeks ;  in  ethics,  since  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount. 
He  will  see  some  races  that  have  been  seemingly 
able  to  spin  a  civilization,  as  the  spider  his  web, 
out  of  their  own  entrails,  and  yet  none  that  has 
not  borrowed,  few  which  have  not  a  tradition  that 
the  seeds  of  culture  were  brought  to  them  from 
abroad.  This  will  lead  him  to  think  how  large  a 
part  commerce  must  have  had  in  the  civilizing 
process,  and  that,  before  commerce  was  possible, 
communities  must  have  existed  of  sufficient  dura 
tion  and  stability  to  produce  more  than  they  could 
consume,  and  therefore  to  desire  profitable  ex 
changes.  It  should  be  encouraging,  then,  to  see, 
as  we  now  see,  the  carrier-doves  of  commerce 
spreading  their  white  wings  over  every  ocean  and 


176        THE  PROGRESS   OF  THE    WORLD 

every  land-locked  sea.  For,  if  they  sometimes 
bear  with  them  the  germs  of  contagious  social  evils, 
they  bear  also  those  of  good ;  and  we  should  de 
spair  of  humanity  did  we  not  believe  that  these 
strike  a  deeper  and  more  enduring  root,  till  they 
crowd  out  their  noxious  rivals  and  occupy  all  the 
soil.  But  if  the  adventurer  into  strange  lands  too 
often  carry  darkness  with  him,  he  seldom  fails  to 
bring  back  light ;  for  nothing  is  more  certain  than 
that  the  mind  widens  with  its  wider  circuit,  and  is 
liberalized  by  contact  with  various  races,  religions, 
and  forms  of  civilization.  It  was  said  of  old, "  Men 
shall  run  to  and  fro,  and  knowledge  shall  be  in 
creased."  We  have  a  striking  instance  of  this  in 
the  Crusaders,  who,  though  they  did  not  realize 
their  dream  of  permanent  conquest,  came  home,  if 
not  more  human,  at  least  more  cosmopolitan ,  which 
is  a  long  stride  towards  becoming  so,  and  unwit 
tingly  brought  with  them  the  seeds  of  that  freer 
thinking  which  slowly  conquered  for  Man  that 
freedom  to  think  which  was  to  emancipate  Europe 
and  make  America  possible.  But  we  should  al 
ways  bear  in  mind  the  wise  saying  of  Goethe,  that 
"whatever  emancipates  our  minds  without  giving 
us  the  mastery  of  ourselves  is  destructive."  And, 
if  Commerce  have  enriched  us  in  many  ways,  both 
spiritually  and  materially,  I  cannot  let  it  go  with 
out  a  sigh  for  the  sentimental  wrong  it  has  uncon 
sciously  done  us  in  bringing  about  that  prosaic  uni 
formity  in  the  costume,  both  of  rnind  and  body, 
which  unhappily  distinguishes  the  modern  from 
that  ancient  world,  to  print  whose  obituary,  one 


THE  PROGRESS  OF  THE  WORLD   111 

might  say,   was  the  first   employment  of   Guten 
berg's  types. 

If  the  history  of  the  world  show  us  Man  slowly 
rising  to  a  higher  conception  and  more  adequate 
fulfilment  of  his  destiny,  it  also  shows  us  the  sadder 
spectacle  of  empires  that  have  perished  and  now 
lie  buried  under  the  decay  of  their  own  monuments. 
Worse  than  this,  it  shows  us  that  higher  forms  of 
civilization  may  be  overwhelmed  and  supplanted  by 
lower  forms;  that  some  families  of  men,  like  the 
pure  negro,  are  incapable  of  civilization  from  their 
own  resources,  and  relapse  into  savagery  when  left 
to  themselves,  as  in  Hayti.  Nay,  members  even 
of  the  higher  and  more  self-sufficing  races  are 
never  beyond  danger  of  this  relapse  when  the 
wholesome  influences  and  restraints  of  organized 
society  are  withdrawn.  Examples  of  this  are  only 
too  common;  as,  in  armies  after  a  rout,  in  great 
cities  under  the  paralysis  of  pestilence,  and  in  the 
mutineers  of  the  Bounty.  The  last  instance  sup 
plies  us  also  with  a  consoling  illustration  of  the 
force  of  hereditary  impulse  and  the  value  of  char 
acter;  since  the  sole  survivor,  John  Adams,  was 
able,  with,  the  Bible  behind  him,  to  piece  together 
again  the  fragments  of  society  into  a  patriarchal 
community  that  revived  the  legend  of  Arcadia. 
The  fact  that  civilization  is,  after  all,  built  on  so 
sandy  a  foundation  as  the  nature  of  man,  that  it 
is  exposed  to  all  the  storms  that  lie  in  wait  for  the 
fortunes  of  man,  should  make  us  more  sensible  of 
that  duty  of  unremitting  vigilance  which  is  needful 
for  its  safeguard. 


178       THE  PROGRESS   OF  THE    WORLD 

In  casting  the  figure  of  the  World's  future, 
many  new  elements,  many  disturbing  forces,  must 
be  taken  into  account.  First  of  all  is  Democracy, 
which,  within  the  memory  of  men  yet  living,  has 
assumed  almost  the  privilege  of  a  Law  of  Nature, 
and  seems  to  be  making  constant  advances  towards 
universal  dominion.  Its  ideal  is  to  substitute  the 
interest  of  the  many  for  that  of  the  few  as  the  test 
of  what  is  wise  in  polity  and  administration,  and 
the  opinion  of  the  many  for  that  of  the  few  as  the 
rule  of  conduct  in  public  affairs.  That  the  inter 
est  of  the  many  is  the  object  of  whatever  social  or 
ganization  man  has  hitherto  been  able  to  effect 
seems  unquestionable;  whether  their  opinions  are 
so  safe  a  guide  as  the  opinions  of  the  few,  and 
whether  it  will  ever  be  possible,  or  wise  if  possible, 
to  substitute  the  one  for  the  other  in  the  hegemony 
of  the  World,  is  a  question  still  open  for  debate. 
Whether  there  was  ever  such  a  thing  as  a  Social 
Contract  or  not,  as  has  been  somewhat  otiosely 
discussed,  this,  at  least,  is  certain,  —  that  the  basis 
of  all  Society  is  the  putting  of  the  force  of  all  at 
the  disposal  of  all,  by  means  of  some  arrangement 
assented  to  by  all,  for  the  protection  of  all,  and  this 
under  certain  prescribed  forms.  This  has  always 
been,  consciously  or  unconsciously,  the  object  for 
which  men  have  striven,  and  which  they  have  more 
or  less  clumsily  accomplished.  The  State  —  some 
established  Order  of  Things,  under  whatever  name 
—  has  always  been,  and  must  always  be,  the  su 
premely  important  thing ;  because  in  it  the  interests 
of  all  are  invested,  by  it  the  duties  of  all  imposed 


THE  PROGRESS  OF  THE  WORLD   179 

and  exacted.  In  point  of  fact,  though  it  be  often 
strangely  overlooked,  the  claim  to  any  selfish  he 
reditary  privilege  because  you  are  born  a  man  is  as 
absurd  as  the  same  claim  because  you  are  born  a 
noble.  In  a  last  analysis,  there  is  but  one  natural 
right;  and  that  is  the  right  of  superior  force.  This 
primary  right,  having  been  found  unworkable  in 
practice,  has  been  deposited,  for  the  convenience 
of  all,  with  the  State,  from  which,  as  the  maker, 
guardian,  and  executor  of  Law,  and  as  a  common 
fund  for  the  use  of  all,  the  rights  of  each  are  de 
rived,  and  man  thus  made  as  free  as  he  can  be 
without  harm  to  his  neighbor.  It  was  this  sur 
render  of  private  jurisdiction  which  made  civiliza 
tion  possible,  and  keeps  it  so.  The  abrogation  of 
the  right  of  private  war  has  done  more  to  secure 
the  rights  of  man,  properly  understood,  —  and, 
consequently,  for  his  well-being,  —  than  all  the 
theories  spun  from  the  brain  of  the  most  subtle 
speculator,  who,  finding  himself  cramped  by  the 
actual  conditions  of  life,  fancies  it  as  easy  to  make 
a  better  world  than  God  intended,  as  it  has  been 
proved  difficult  to  keep  in  running  order  the  world 
that  man  has  made  out  of  his  fragmentary  concep 
tion  of  the  divine  thought.  The  great  peril  of  de 
mocracy  is,  that  the  assertion  of  private  right  should 
be  pushed  to  the  obscuring  of  the  superior  obliga 
tion  of  public  duty. 

The  pluralizing  in  his  single  person,  by  the  Ed 
itor  of  the  Newspaper,  of  the  offices  once  divided 
among  the  Church,  the  University,  and  the  Courts 
of  Law,  is  one  of  the  most  striking  phenomena  of 


180    THE  PROGRESS  OF  THE  WORLD 

modern  times  in  democratized  countries,  and  is 
calculated  to  inspire  thoughtful  men  with  some 
distrust.  Such  pretension  to  omniscience  and  to 
the  functions  it  involves  has  not  been  seen  since 
the  days  of  Voltaire,  and  even  he  never  aspired  to 
anything  beyond  the  privilege  of  issuing  his  own 
private  notes  and  not  the  bonds  on  which  the  credit 
of  the  Universe  depends,  The  Church,  the  Uni 
versity,  and  the  Courts  taught  at  least  under  the 
guidance  of  some  extrinsic  standard  of  Authority, 
or  of  Experience,  or  of  Tradition,  but  what  may 
be  the  outcome  of  a  world  edited  subjectively  every 
morning  is  matter  of  alarming  conjecture.  Anon- 
ymousness  also  evades  responsibility.  But  it  is 
encouraging  to  note  that  the  higher  type  of  editor 
is  coming  every  day  to  a  fuller  sense  of  the  mean 
ing  of  his  many-sided  calling,  and  that  the  news 
paper  itself  is  really  beginning  to  furnish  an  in 
structive  epitome  of  contemporary  culture  in  all  its 
branches,  which,  if  it  cannot  supply  the  place  of 
more  thorough  and  special  training,  may  inspire  in 
some  an  appetite  for  it,  and  prevent  others  from 
suffering,  so  much  as  they  otherwise  might,  by  the 
want  of  it.  Moreover,  the  power  to  influence  pub 
lic  opinion  is  cumulative,  gathering  slowly  but 
surely  to  the  abler  and  more  scrupulous  conductors 
of  the  press,  and  it  is  observable  that  Wisdom 
generally  comes  to  stay,  while  Error-  is  apt  to  bo 
but  a  transitory  lodger. 

Another  very  serious  factor  in  the  problem  of 
the  future  is  Socialism.  This,  it  is  true,  is  no 
novel  phenomenon.  Its  theory,  at  least,  must  have 


THE  PROGRESS  OF  THE  WORLD   181 

been  dimly  conceived  by  the  first  man  who  had  lit 
tle  and  wanted  more,  and  who  found  Society  guilty 
of  the  shortcomings  whose  cause  may  have  been 
mainly  in  himself.  Nay,  there  is  dynamite  enough 
in  the  New  Testament,  if  illegitimately  applied, 
to  blow  all  our  existing  institutions  to  atoms.  All 
well-meaning  and  humane  men  sympathize  with 
the  aims  of  Lasalle  and  Karl  Marx.  All  thought 
ful  men  see  well-founded  and  insuperable  difficul 
ties  in  the  way  of  their  accomplishment.  But  the 
socialism  of  the  closet  is  a  very  different  thing 
from  that  of  hordes  of  unthinking  men  to  whom 
universal  suffrage  may  give  the  power  of  unmaking 
Order  by  making  Laws.  Our  federal  system  gives 
us  a  safeguard,  however,  that  is  wanting  in  more 
centralized  governments.  Should  one  State  choose 
to  make  the  experiment  of  mending  its  watch  by 
taking  out  the  mainspring,  the  others  can  meanwhile 
look  on  and  take  warning  by  the  result.  We  have 
already  observed  a  movement  towards  the  intro 
duction  of  socialistic  theories  into  both  State  and 
National  legislation,  though,  if  History  teach  any 
thing,  it  teaches  that  the  true  function  of  Govern 
ment  is  the  prevention  and  remedy  of  evils  so  far 
only  as  these  depend  on  causes  within  the  reach  of 
law,  and  that  it  has  lost  any  proper  conception  of 
its  duty  when  it  becomes  a  distributor  of  alms. 
Timid  people  dread  the  insurrection  of  Bone  and 
Sinew  without  seeing  that  unwise  concessions  to 
their  unreasoned  demands,  which  include  the  right 
to  revive  private  war,  will  lead  inevitably  to  the 
revolt  of  Brain,  with  consequences  far  more  disas- 


182   THE  PROGRESS  OF  THE  WORLD 

trous  to  the  liberties  so  painfully  won  in  all  the 
ages  during  which  man  has  been  visible  to  us. 
When  men  formed  their  first  Society,  they  instinct 
ively  recognized,  in  the  Priest,  the  Lawgiver,  or 
the  Great  Captain,  the  supreme  fact  that  Intellect 
is  the  divinely  appointed  lieutenant  of  God  in  the 
government  of  this  World,  and  in  the  ordering  of 
man's  place  in  it  and  of  his  relations  towards  it. 
This  viceroy  may  be  deposed,  as  during  the  drunk 
enness  of  the  French  Revolution,  but  out  of  the 
very  crime  will  arise  the  Avenger. 

It  has  seemed  to  some,  and  those  not  the  least 
wise  of  their  generation,  that  the  advance  of  Sci 
ence  on  which  we  so  much  plume  ourselves  was  no 
unmixed  good,  and  that  this  seemingly  gracious 
benefactress  perhaps  took  away  with  one  hand  as 
much  as  she  gave  with  the  other.  We  are  not  yet 
in  a  position  to  compute  the  results  of  its  influence 
in  modifying  human  thought  and  action.  That 
it  may  be  great  none  doubt  who  are  capable  of 
forming  a  judgment;  and,  if  long  life  were  for  any 
reason  a  desirable  thing,  I  can  conceive  of  none 
more  valid  than  that  it  might  be  prolonged  till 
some  of  these  results  could  be  classed  and  tabulated. 
I  cannot  share  their  fears  who  are  made  unhappy 
by  the  foreboding  that  Science  is  in  some  unex 
plained  way  to  take  from  us  our  sense  of  spirit 
ual  things.  What  she  may  do  is  to  forbid  our 
vulgarizing  them  by  materialistic  conceptions  of 
their  nature;  and  in  this  she  will  be  serving  the 
best  interests  of  Truth  and  of  mankind  also.  For 
it  is  Man's  highest  distinction  and  safeguard  that 


THE  PROGRESS  OF  THE  WORLD   183 

he  cannot  if  he  would  rest  satisfied  till  he  have 
pushed  to  its  full  circumference  whatever  fragmen 
tary  arc  of  truth  he  has  been  able  to  trace  with 
the  compasses  of  his  mind.  Give  to  Science  her 
undisputed  prerogative  in  the  realm  of  matter,  and 
she  must  become,  whether  she  will  or  no,  the  trib 
utary  of  Faith.  Invisibilia  enim  ipsius  \_Dei\  a 
creatura  mundi  per  ea  quce  facta  sunt  intdlecta. 
Whatever  else  Science  may  accomplish,  she  will 
never  contrive  to  make  all  men  equally  tall  in  body 
or  mind.  By  labor-saving  expedients  she  may 
multiply  every  man's  hands  by  fifty7,  but  she  can 
never  find  a  substitute  for  the  planning  and  direct 
ing  head ;  nor,  though  she  abolish  space  and  time, 
can  she  endow  electricity  and  vibration  with  the 
higher  functions  of  soid.  The  more  she  makes  one 
lobe  of  the  brain  Aristotelian,  so  much  more  will 
the  other  intrigue  for  an  invitation  to  the  banquet 
of  Plato.  Theology  will  find  out  in  good  time  that 
there  is  no  atheism  at  once  so  stupid  and  so  harm 
ful  as  the  fancying  God  to  be  afraid  of  any  know 
ledge  with  which  He  has  enabled  Man  to  equip 
himself.  Should  the  doctrines  of  Natural  Selec 
tion,  Survival  of  the  Fittest,  and  Heredity  be  ac 
cepted  as  Laws  of  Nature,  they  must  profoundly 
modify  the  thought  of  men  and,  consequently,  their 
action.  But  we  should  remember  that  it  is  the 
privilege  and  distinction  of  man  to  mitigate  natural 
laws,  and  to  make  them  his  partners  if  he  cannot 
make  them  his  servants.  Human  nature  is  too  ex 
pansive  a  force  to  be  safely  bottled  up  in  any  sci 
entific  formula,  however  incontrovertible. 


184   THE  PROGRESS  OF  THE  WORLD 

I  should  be  glad  to  speculate  also  on  the  effect 
of  the  tendency  of  population  towards  great  cities; 
no  new  thing,  but  intensified  as  never  before  by 
increased  and  increasing  ease  of  locomutation. 
The  evil  is  intensified  by  the  fact  that  this  migra 
tion  is  recruited  much  more  largely  from  the  help 
less  than  from  the  energetic  class  of  the  rural  pop 
ulation;  and  it  is  not  only  an  evil  but  a  danger 
where,  as  with  us,  suffrage  has  no  precautionary 
limits.  If  no  remedy  be  possible,  a  palliative 
should  be  sought  in  whatever  will  make  the  coun 
try  more  entertaining;  as  in  village  libraries  that 
may  turn  solitude  into  society,  and  in  a  more  thor 
ough  and  intelligent  teaching  of  natural  history  in 
our  public  schools.  The  ploughman  who  is  also  a 
naturalist  runs  his  furrow  through  the  most  inter 
esting  museum  in  the  world.  To  discuss  the  cohe 
sive  or  disruptive  forces  of  Race  and  of  Nationality 
might  tempt  me  still  to  linger,  but  I  have  kept  the 
reader  quite  long  enough  from  the  book  itself.  I 
have  barely  touched  on  several  points  on  which  it 
has  roused  or  quickened  thought.  So  far  as  the 
material  prosperity  of  mankind  is  concerned,  the 
review  is  by  no  means  discomforting,  and  as  I  am 
one  of  those  who  believe  that  only  when  the  bodily 
appetites  of  man  are  satisfied,  does  he  become  first 
conscious  of  a  spiritual  hunger  and  thirst  that  de 
mand  quite  other  food  to  appease  them,  so  we  may 
say,  with  some  confidence,  sicut  patribus  erit  Deus 
nobis. 


OVERDUE. 


OCT   1J?«1 


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